Mobile Marketing Forum

The immense majority of users in the study had a very negative impression of WAP. The most disliked feature of WAP Service, not surprisingly, it was the slow throughput of data. Users also complained about the lack of depth and the uneven quality of the data itself. Even when reporting on the feature that most liked best–the ability to get news headlines–users were still unhappy with the quality of the data they got. In addition, users noticed very little differentiation of services; that is, information from very different sources looked and sounded the same. The report noted that this is probably due to the constraints on data size in WAP–headlines tend to sound the same when a limited number of works can be used. The phenomenon is completely contrary to the Web, where the same information can be packaged in any number of unique and interesting ways.

Premium Services are generally provided by third parties, other than Optus, but they are billed on your Optus bill for post paid or deducted from your call credits for prepaid. They are usually accessed via numbers starting with ‘19’ and are either 6 or 8 digits long. You can be charged a number of different ways like, you may be charged everytime you send a text message from your mobile phone, everytime you receive a text message to your mobile phone and for both sending and receiving a message from your mobile phone.

Some premium services might require you to use data connection GPRS/WAP to access content, which you may also be charged for. Additionally, a registration fee may also be imposed by some service providers.

That’s why it’s important you read the terms and conditions of a premium service prior to making a purchase to ensure you fully understand how much the content is going to cost.

The nature of cellular technology renders many phones vulnerable to ‘cloning’: anytime a cell phone moves out of coverage (for example, in a road tunnel), when the signal is re-established, the phone sends out a ‘re-connect’ signal to the nearest cell-tower, identifying itself and signalling that it is again ready to transmit. With the proper equipment, it’s possible to intercept the re-connect signal and encode the data it contains into a ‘blank’ phone — in all respects, the ‘blank’ is then an exact duplicate of the real phone and any calls made on the ‘clone’ will be charged to the original account.

Third-generation (3G) networks, which are still being deployed, began in Japan in 2001. They are all digital, and offer high-speed data access in addition to voice services and include W-CDMA (known also as UMTS), and CDMA2000 EV-DO. China will launch a third generation technology on the TD-SCDMA standard. Operators use a mix of predesignated frequency bands determined by the network requirements and local regulations.