Today, mobile phone and tablet seems like fashion accessories in our lives. Huge popularity of mobile phones and tablets, those drives mobile technology developed in very fast speed. Actually, it has made a great impact on business world. This kind easy and connective device also extended to our social life, lots of innovative mobile apps it makes life easier and efficient.

1. ECOM6001_ Assignment 2_081208 Page 1 of 8
1. Introduction
Today, mobile phone and tablet seems like fashion accessories in our lives. Huge
popularity of mobile phones and tablets, those drives mobile technology developed in
very fast speed. Actually, it has made a great impact on business world. This kind
easy and connective device also extended to our social life, lots of innovative mobile
apps it makes life easier and efficient such as mobile payment, location map, dining
spot search, taxi call ….. etc. Six years ago, Internet on Mobile was just begun,
together with mobile service networks; users can access the mobile webpage to see the
real time news, finance, music and entertainment channels.
2. Abstract
This paper is one coursework of Masters of Science programme in 2008, it was
regarding the Web on mobile device, and how did people access the infotainment on
mobile phone and using mobile services for their business and personal life. This was
interesting topic because mobile devices are much closed to our daily lives; we most of
time using it for voice communication with people. Web browsing is a kind of
information access on the web, some major mobile operators in Hong Kong provides
entertainment programs on mobile phones and called it as Infotainment. In the paper,
it would mention what the components available to deliver the Web features on handsets
and the telecommunication companies how to deliver their service and contents to
subscribers. The other objective of this paper is to realize what the reasons of people
likely to possess more than one mobile handset and subscribed more than one mobile
phone number.
Keywords : Web, WAP, i-Mode, Smart Phone
3. Internet on Mobile
3.1 What is Web ?
Web is a subset of the computers on the Internet that are connected computers and their
contents and makes it easily accessible to each other in a specific way. Web includes
an easy-to-use standard interface; it makes people even though not computer experts
can easily to access a variety of Internet resources [1]
such as worldwide latest news,
webmail, information search, via an adequate screen size monitor together with fast
processor and connection speed.
[1]
Electronic Commerce, Gary P Schneider p27

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In the beginning, Internet just for scientists or academic researchers, due to lots of
benefits on the Internet, it became one of the most popular technological and social
communication media and used rapidly as began from 1990. [2]
As the web-surfing
dramatically as a part of life, people desire on making the web-surfing in movable way
in order to access Internet anywhere. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) has been
launched by the leading telecommunication company i.e.Vodafone from 2000 to enable
handsets features as new service to customers.
3.2 What is WAP ?
WAPis in fact a protocol suite specifying the format of the content that can be delivered
from Web servers to the mobile devices. The WAP standard describes a protocol suite
that allows the interoperability of WAP equipment and software with many different
network technologies such as GSM and CDMS networks. WAP protocol suite
including [3]
: -
Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP)
• One protocol in WAP architecture, covers the transport layer protocols in the
Internet model.
• As general transport service, WDP offers a consistent service to the upper layer
protocols and communicating transparently over one of the available underlying
bearer services.
• Processes datagrams from upper layers to formats required by different physical
datapaths, bearers, that may be GSM SMS or CDMA Packet Data.
• In consequence of the interface common to transport protocols, the upper layer
protocols of the WAP architecture can operate independent of the underlying
wireless network.
Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS)
• Provides a public-key cryptography-based security mechanism similar to TLS.
• Allows negotiation of cryptographic suites between client and server.
[2]
Electronic Commerce, Gary P Schneider p29
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol, 30 Nov 08

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Wireless Transaction Protocol (WTP)
• One standard used in mobile telephony, that is to bring Internet access to mobile
phones.
• It provides functions similar to TCP, except that it has reduced amount of
information needed for each transaction.
• It saves processing and memory cost as compared to TCP.
• It supports 3 types of transaction : 1. Unreliable One-Way Request 2. Reliable
One-Way Request 3. Unreliable Two-Way request.
Wireless Session Protocol (WSP)
 Wireless session is nothing but a normal Web browsing session that starts when
the user connects to one URL and ends when the user leaves that URL. The session
establishing process will not have lengthy hand shaking mechanisms.
 WSP provides the upper-level application layer of WAP with a consistent interface
for two session services.
 Connection-oriented service that operates above a transaction layer protocol WTP.
 Connectionless service that operates above a secure or non-secure datagram
transport service.
 In the connection-mode it enhances the HTTP 1.1's performance over wireless
environment. It also provides a session layer so the whole WAP environment
resembles ISO OSI Reference Model.
Wireless Application Environment (WAE)
• Consists of two parts: protocols (includes WSP, WTP, WDP) and content
(WML).
• Web server only speaks HTTP, WAE uses a gateway to translate between WAP
and HTTP.
• WAP 1.X – the primary language of the WAE is WML which has been designed
from scratch for handheld device with phone-specific features.
• WAP 2.0 – the primary markup language is XHTML Mobile Profile.

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3.3 Why WAP ?
WAP is an open, global specification that empowers mobile users with wireless devices
to easily access and interact with information and services instantly. It is designed to
work with most wireless networks such as CDPD, CDMA, GSM, PDC, PHS, TDMA,
FLEX, ReFLEX, iDEN, TETRA, DECT, ataTAC and GRPS.
WAP is to show internet contents on wireless clients like mobile phones, it’s fit into a
small wireless terminal. WAP uses a Micro Browser, it is
a small piece of software that makes minimal demands
on hardware, memory and CPU. It can display
information by WML (Wireless Markup Language), it is
inherited from HTML and based on XML. WML is
used to create pages that can be displayed in a WAP
browser. Pages in WML are called DECKS. Decks are constructed as a set of
CARDS. Micro Browser can also interpret a reduced version of JavaScript called
WMLScript, it is a light JavaScript language and runs simple code on the browser.
Advantage of WAP
• WAP will benefit end-users with easy, secure access to relevant internet
information and services like unified messaging to access email account, banking,
entertainment etc.
• Users will be able to retrieve information in a controlled, fast and low-cost
environment.
Disadvantage of WAP : -
• WAP site browser screen is too small on mobile device.
• Limitation on mobile device such as large amounts of data, especially graphics
and animations are not allowed.
• Not enough applications of WAP device, it’s features only for using 2G wireless
network. The bandwidth is unable to best uses of the network resource and takes a
longer time to access the WAP site.

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3.4 What is i-Mode ?
There’re some other protocols like i-Mode for delivering web contents to mobile
devices while WAP is one common communication protocol specially tailored for
mobile devices. i-Mode is a wireless internet service popular in Japan and launched
in 1999. Unlike WAP, i-Mode encompasses a wider variety of internet standards
including web access, email and the packet-switched network that delivers the data to
mobile device. Users can access to various services such as e-mail, sports results,
weather forecast, games, financial services and ticket booking. Content is provided by
specialized mobile carrier as like NTT DoCoMo, which allows them to have tighter
control over billing.[4]
In addition, i-Mode consists of three technologies: a smart handset, a new transmission
protocol and a new markup language. Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) is the
transmission protocol of i-Mode that enables several subscribers to use the same line at
once, so that user can quickly and continuous access to the Internet. i-Mode’s
transmission speed is 9.6Kbps (bit per second), it may insufficient for download video,
but appropriate for short email and simple graphics.
i-Mode adopted C-HTML (compact HTML) as its markup language to focus on text
and simple graphics. Since a mobile phone has a small display with touch button
manipulation, it requires a special markup language to display data. There have two
major ways to meet this needs : C-HTML and WAP. Website operators can easily
convert an existing Web page to C-HTML while WAP is an international standard
language.
3.5 What is Smart Phone ?
Due to the continuous development of mobile devices technology, Smartphone like
iPhone and Blackberry both have been launched to overcome the limitation of WAP
and i-Mode and enhance the functional capability. For instance, HTML is a bit too
complex or too large to be fit in a mobile device, however, the browsers in newer
handsets, like iPhones can actually interpret most of the HTML pages. Smartphone is
now equivalent to a low-end PC, it has 100 MHz processor many megabytes of flash
memory and a colour display with a graphical user interface. These smartphones
enable users to browse the Net with a touch of button.
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mode, 30 Nov 08

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The iPhone is an internet-connected multimedia smartphone designed and marketed by
Apple Inc. with a flush multi-touch colour LCD screen and a minimal hardware
interface. The device does not have a physical keyboard, so a virtual keyboard is
rendered on the touch screen. The iPhone's functions include those of a camera phone
and portable media player (equivalent to the iPod) in addition to text messaging and
visual voicemail. It also offers Internet services including email, web browsing and
local WiFi connectivity. The first generation phone hardware was quad-band GSM with
EDGE; the second generation also adds UMTS with HSDPA. Apple introduced iPhone
in United States on June 2007. [5]
BlackBerry is support full featured Email capabilities with the functionality of a
complete personal organizer. It’s include an additional interface such as a miniature
QWERTY keyboard, a touch screen or a D-pad, contact management, an accelerometer,
built-in navigation hardware and software, the ability to read business documents in a
variety of formats such as PDF and Microsoft Office. As well as media software for
playing music, browsing photos and viewing video clips, internet browsers or even just
secure access to company mail. One common feature to the majority of the smartphones
is a contact list able to store as many contacts as the available memory permits.[6]
Smart Phone is a state-of-the-art mobile device offering advanced capabilities beyond
a typical mobile phone, often with PC like functionality. It runs complete operating
system software providing a standardized interface and platform to allow software to
be installed.
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphone, 2 Dec 08
[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone, 30 Nov 08

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3.6 Major mobile network operators and services in Hong Kong
As a Hi-Tech city, Hong Kong has 9.92 million mobile phone subscribers in 6.9 million
populations; Hong Kong’s 2.5G mobile phone subscribers around 2.91 million, 3G
subscribers around 2.38 million as well as other subscribers (prepaid subscribers), it
was around 5.14 million as of July 2008.
Combined with various information about Hong Kong Mobile Operators, some rough
figures of subscribers have been collected as follows : -
Mobile Phone Operator Subscribers
3 Hong Kong 2,657,000
CSL 1010 2,100,000
SmarTone-Vodafone 1,118,000
PCCW/Sunday 1,071,000
People Telecom 800,000
Currently, 2.5G and 3G wireless mobile devices are widely using in Hong Kong, iPhone
is popular progressively while Blackberry being adopted by business traveler mostly
across Mainland and Hong Kong. All such of mobile services provided by some
leading network operators such as 3 Hong Kong/Hutchison Telecom, CSL 1010, and
SmarTone-Vodafone in Hong Kong. Followings are some information about these
operators and services.
Mobile Phone Subscriber in Hong Kong
35%
27%
14%
14%
10% 3 Hong Kong
CSL 1010
Smartone Vadafone
PCCW/Sunday
People Telecom

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4. Conclusion
According to such findings, we can understand that mobile phone and related devices
already merged into our lives, we seems living with advanced information technology
and ready transit to a “High Speed Information Era”.
Due to stable telecommunication networks and infrastructure, people can easily connect
with worldwide and get the information anywhere. It may motivate the people possess
more than one mobile phone for individual wants or new model replacement.
Furthermore, Smart Phone already a trend worldwide, most leading mobile phone
manufacturer likely to produce customizing mobile phones into big screen with mobile
computing and wireless technology to combine personal and business features to fits
the user’s needs and lifestyle.