Kannel sets itself up as the WAP Apache

Aside from WAP's other problems has been the age-old issue of proprietary structures. Everyone and their dog appears to have a WAP gateway and of course they've never bothered to make sure theirs will communicate with anything but what they're interested in.

Enter Kannel. The company has set up a free, open source WAP gateway which it would like you to download from its site. The model is already familiar - it basically wants to be the mobile equivalent of the Apache Web server. Kannel says it wants to open up WAP's potential [and that is? - Ed] and an open source gateway is certainly one obstacle out of the way.

The software also works as an SMS gateway for GSM and this is where the company's intrinsic interest comes in. Kannel was set up by Wapit just over a year ago. The name certainly gives an indication that it might be interested in growing the WAP infrastructure. Wapit acts as a "content innovator" and wireless overseer and has put most of its effort into SMS. So there's the reasoning.

WAP does get a hard time here at The Reg, mostly because what is actually available is rubbish, but then with more and more companies pumping resources into the protocol, even we are sure that something good will come out of it - it's just a matter of when. A free, open-source gateway is definitely a step in the right direction. ®