Wireless messaging services are looked upon by many wireless service providers and Internet service providers as the “killer app” that will fuel both future subscriber and revenue growth. Unfortunately, the cost of implementing such services into networks is still prohibitively high compared with the current revenue potential of rolling out services.
To help wireless and Internet service providers integrate wireless messaging services into their offerings, Mirapoint Inc. introduced WAPmail Direct, a wireless messaging server offering embedded support for WAP services in one unified box.
Mirapoint said appliances using its WAPmail Direct service expedite the transition to wireless, delivering message data in a format that WAP phones can interpret without requiring an Internet message access protocol gateway for messaging protocol translation.
By eliminating the need for an IMAP client for each user, Mirapoint said WAPmail Direct removes the bottleneck on scalability that inhibits other WAP solutions.
“Service providers or enterprise customers who use WAPmail Direct do not need any experience in wireless,” said Todd Whitaker, vice president of product marketing for Mirapoint. “They just have to know how to enter [Universal Resource Locator] addresses.”
Once implemented, the service enables users to directly send and access all of the Internet messages using any WAP-enabled phone. Through the Web interface on the wireless device, Mirapoint adds administration tools that allow users to prioritize messages that meet specific criteria, and it can send paging alerts upon arrival.
WAPmail Direct also provides preferential sorting for viewing important messages on the wireless device, minimizing the time users spend scrolling through lower-priority message headers.
For enterprises that want to add wireless e-mail access for their employees, Mirapoint said WAPmail Direct can easily be integrated into a company’s Internet server providing access to Internet messages for mobile users from any WAP-enabled phone, without additional products, hardware or administration.
Mirapoint noted that WAPmail Direct, which joins recently released Webmail Direct as the company’s second product from its Global Open Access strategy, offers direct protocol support for i-mode, wireless markup language and compact hypertext markup language protocols.
Mirapoint said implementation costs are expected to run as little as 50 cents per customer, depending on subscriber numbers, diminishing the cost barrier keeping service providers and enterprises from deploying wireless messaging services.
