W3C Mobile Access work group position paper

Tokyo Apr. 7th - 8th



Nokia Group is a global telecommunications company providing network
infrastructure and terminals for wireless networks. 
Among the company interests, Nokia considers wireless data as a very
important area that will be growing considerably during the next few
years. 
Whereas currently speech is dominating wireless networks operation and
has limited the share of data applications into small share, 
the situation is expected to change drastically over the next years.
More specifically, the development of packet data technologies 
and the steady increase in bandwith  for data access will accelerate
this evolution.

Nokia sees Internet access as one of the prevailing services for
wireless data users. In addition to laptop computers, 
small phone terminals and PDAs will more be used to access Internet
whose service providers benefits from the increasing number of services
enjoyed. 
It is therefore important to achieve a global standard which would take
advantage of the  characteristics of various terminal types, 
taking into account of different terminal functions. In addition to low
bandwith which already sets some restrictions to the amount of data 
that can be efficiently transfered,  other special features of low end
terminals should be addressed, such as, small display size, 
limited input mechanism and limited processing power.

Nokia is convinced that there is a clear need for a global for mobile
Internet access, and  is actively working to achieve such standard. 
Nokia is one of the founding members of the Wireless Application Forum
(www.wapforum.org) which is developing a comprehensive and network 
independent set of protocol for wireless data access.