It is our position that the needs of Mobile Internet Access may be best met by applying and extending existing technologies for information transfer and display currently in practice on the World Wide Web such as HTML, XML, and scripting. This best leverages existing content, technologies, tools and skills, and provides a straightforward "on-ramp" for Mobile Internet Access applications. Through a combination of site description via XML, content presentation via HTML scripting, and separation of content and presentation, it’s possible to provide a compelling solution for Mobile Internet Access that reapplies existing techniques for use with small mobile devices.

Mobile Internet Access must provide a mechanism for low-bandwidth high-efficiency transfer and storage of Internet information leveraging existing content, standards, tools, and skills. It must operate on very small devices over a variety of connection types ranging from wired serial, wired parallel, modem, ethernet, IRDA, as well as both one-way and two-way wireless transports. It must also operate effectively with or without a live connection and on asynchronous channels. Due to the unique vulnerability of mobile devices, secure communication of information must be a fundamental design point of any solution.

The World Wide Web has fostered a proliferation of HTML content on the Internet. Creating and supporting this content is a whole legion of skilled individuals utilizing tools designed to maintain web sites, HTML code, scripting code, and the basic content.

When we contemplate how to move forward from where we are today, the best strategy is to apply what already works and to extend it only as required in order to work in the new environment of Mobile Internet Access.

We partition the problem space for Mobile Internet Access into the following areas:

• Presenting rich information on small mobile devices without overwhelming storage capacities
• Transferring rich information to and from a small mobile device over a low-bandwidth and possibly asymmetrical connection
• Allowing both online and offline access to transferred information
• Protecting communications using secure channels due to physical insecurity

There are a number of powerful ways to reuse existing technologies to address these problems:

• Use standard HTML to allow for rich information display. Also key is choosing sensible extensions to HTML to avoid overwhelming the processing abilities of the device.
• Separate the page presentation (HTML and stylesheet formatting) and the actual content data via the application of reusable HTML scripts. This borrows directly from the existing server-side scripting techniques which dynamically render HTML based upon HTML "templates" which first cull the correct data and then present it to the client. This provides both reduced storage and transfer requirements.
• Use metadata standards such Content Definition Format (CDF) which is an XML syntax for describing the structure and content of a website. These standards allow a client to both intelligently "pull" desired content as well as to filter out undesired content. In addition, use of these standards enables offline access to transferred content and provides a mechanism to associate HTML scripts to the underlying data.
• Use standard HTML forms along with HTTP Post and Get semantics to allow for two-way interaction between the mobile device and the server host. This may operate in real-time over a connection, or be buffered for transmission at a later time.
• Use existing secure authentication and encryption standards.