Weather Channel uses WAP to speed innovations to users

The Weather Channel Mobile continued to expand its offerings, adding traffic information and hourly forecasts to its wireless services.
The Weather.com mobile Web site now features traffic data for 24 metro areas including speed overview maps, incident level reports, accident mapping and construction information. The company also added national severe weather alerts, Spanish language information, and detailed hourly forecasts including temperature, weather icons and chance of precipitation.
The free, ad-supported service is available on carrier decks as well as directly from the company’s WAP site.
“We had a bunch of discussions about whether to put this in our premium products or whether to make it widely available,” said Louis Gump, vice president of mobile for The Weather Channel Interactive. “This type of information is so interesting to so many people, we wanted to make it available to a broad market. If you put it in a premium Java application, it takes a while to roll out to the marketplace. The fastest way to get this out to a bunch of people is to put it on the mobile Web.”