T-Mobile calls it a day for CSD-WAP Subscribers

T-Mobile UK have announced they are going to disconnect its CSD-WAP solution and suggest customers switch to GPRS. T-Mobile are therefore also disposing of the WAP billing model of pay-per-minute internet access.

CSD is a connection-based technology, just like making a phone call, so connections were charged by the minute rather than by the quantity of data. Circuit Switched Data (CSD) was how mobile phones accessed data services in the early days. Technically equivalent to a dial-up modem, it allowed for speeds of up to 9.6Kb/sec. The last few T-Mobile customers using CSD are paying £2.50 a month for 30 minutes, or are on one of the Freetime tariffs.

The first WAP phones were all CSD based and like all technology touted as the latest thing. In reality the experience was very slow, even with mono graphics and text based content.

Part of WAP though is still in use on a daily basis for delivery of services such as Sky, for their “red button” interaction as well delivering operator portals and delivering content to handsets. There the WAP protocol is still very much in use.

Source: The Register

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