WAPCON 2001 evinces good response

BANGALORE: The second round of WAP conference, ‘WAPCON 2001’, evinced a

good response amongst the industry with a good turnout witnessed in corporate

participation for the seminar, paper presentation, tutorials and exhibitions.

Head of electrical engineering, IIT Madras, and a leading telecommunication

and Internet access scientist in India, Prof Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala, urged the

government to grant separate licenses to service providers of telephony and

Internet services in rural areas. According to him, the move would help in

boosting the penetration level of telephony and Internet accessibility in the

rural areas, which is presently at an abysmal level.

The conference was aimed at bringing nearly 300 to 400 mobile Internet

enthusiasts on a common platform to discuss the opportunities available by the

use of WAP and its related technologies. The conference also discussed various

problems faced by the WAP technology including the lack of market opportunities

for this technology.

New mobile devices, better accessibility, security solutions, emerging open

standards for WAP technology were some of the topics discussed by experts during

paper presentations. Emerging standards such as SyncML and WAP's new

architecture were also the point of focus during the first day of the WAPCON

conference.

The organizers of the conference, IWIN (India Wireless Internet Initiative)

said they had 63 registered members, out of which 35 were corporates in the

previous year. The number will increase with participation expected to at least

double in over the pervious year, said one member.

Although WAP is the only open standard for Internet access through mobile

devices the focus of the conference will be in bringing about a consensus on a

unified standard among the member companies.