Wireless Village is a set of specifications for mobile

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

and presence services. It is intended to be a standard for

cellphone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This radio ...

s and mobile devices to use these services across platforms. Many wireless phones now include mobile instant messaging capabilities designed to hook into messaging services using

IMPS IMP or imp may refer to: * Imp, a fantasy creature Arts and entertainment Music * IMP (band) a Japanese boy band Fictional characters * Imp (She-Ra), a character in ''She-Ra: Princess of Power'' * Imp a character in ''Artemis Fowl: The Lost ...

on a carrier's network, formerly known as the Wireless Village protocol. Those phones implement it as an ''IM'' icon on the phone, which is typically renamed and customized by the cellphone carrier or removed completely if not supported at the network level. Most

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

and

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

phones have that feature, as do many

Sony Ericsson Sony Mobile Communications Inc., originally Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, was a Multinational corporation, multinational consumer electronics and telecommunications company, best known for its Mobile phones, mobile phone products. The ...

phones. Wireless Village has recently consolidated into the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and no longer exists as an independent organization.

Description

The white paper describes the service: ''"Where possible, the protocol makes use of existing Internet and Web technologies. These technologies are implemented widely and are well tested, so their use within the protocol ensure easy implementation and interoperability testing. XML, the Extensible Markup Language, is rapidly emerging as the lingua franca for representing structured data over the Web. To the extent possible, the protocol uses XML to represent the protocol data being exchanged during an IMPS session. IMPS activities in the IETF IMPP have received widespread interest throughout the industry. Although it is still in development, to the extent possible, the Wireless Village initiative will support the CPIM draft and build upon it. Other useful standards in this space include the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) for registering the format of the IMPS protocol messages."''

History

An announcement was made when this service was conceived by

Ericsson (), commonly known as Ericsson (), is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one ...

and

. The specification is maintained by the

Open Mobile Alliance OMA SpecWorks, previously the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), is a standards organization which develops open, international technical standards for the mobile phone industry. It is a nonprofit Non-governmental organization (NGO), not a formal govern ...

, and is currently at version 1.3 of the protocol. As of now, only a few public services exist using Wireless Village. Any unlocked phone can be configured to use these services, and therefore connect to other

services if implemented.

Operator implementations

noknok
MTN South Africa, South Africa's 1st operator launched IMPS service. It does not work with native phone applications.

Yamigo

Yamigo was a free communications service, based in

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

, that allowed

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

s over wireless data services such as

GPRS General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), also called 2.5G, is a mobile data standard on the 2G cellular communication network's Global System for Mobile Communications, global system for mobile communications (GSM). Networks and mobile devices wit ...

. The service was based on the protocol Wireless Village, developed by the

, which is a joint venture between

and other mobile device manufacturers. Certain models of

mobile phones A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This radio ...

that include a chat client could access the Yamigo network. These included certain models of phones from Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational technology conglomerate. It is focused on industrial automation, building automation, rail transport and health technology. Siemens is the largest engineering company in Europe, and holds the positi ...

. Once registered, Yamigo users could send messages to each other, and to users on Yahoo! Messenger,

MSN Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as MSN), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a Cross-platform software, cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the now-di ...

AOL Instant Messenger AOL Instant Messenger (AIM, sometimes stylized as aim) was an instant messaging and presence information computer program created by AOL. It used the proprietary OSCAR protocol, OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow us ...

and ICQ. Yamigo supported importing contact lists from those services automatically. Users connected to Yamigo via WAP and the internet. On the service's sign up page, users selected how frequently their phone polled the Yamigo network. Because it is a client-server protocol, receiving messages depended on how often the phone was set to poll the network. The service was abandoned in late 2005, and the last upgrade was version .19 in April 2005.

References

External links