FORT WORTH, Texas-Motorola Inc.’s Messaging Systems Products Group announced the Wireless Application Protocol Forum will support the FLEX and ReFLEX paging protocols in its specifications.
The WAP standard is a common set of application protocols enabling application developers to create software for one standard that can operate over a variety of wireless networks. With the inclusion of FLEX, one- and two-way pagers and paging networks also can make use of these applications.
Subscribers will be able to customize their pagers to have specific information sent to them automatically from different sources, such as the Internet, with Web-based push and request-reply applications, Motorola said.
Also, WAP specifications with FLEX allows paging carriers, application developers, and network and device manufacturers to use an industrywide standard to establish new advanced wireless applications and information services. Integrated access to Internet content through open publishing and protocol standards, such as Wireless Markup Language, is one example.
“Through the use of WAP on the FLEX and ReFLEX protocols, you could have some customers on paging and others on cellular, depending on their individual needs,” said Jim Lawson, vice president of technical operations for AirTouch Paging. “Having one common standard that serves different wireless networks will promote industrywide interoperability. People will be able to pick the wireless networks on which they want to put the applications.”
