Currently Content Transforming or Converting the Desktop Web into the Mobile web is a very hot topic. In this article I will just try to focus some of my questions related to Content Transcoding and will focus on some of my thoughts from an operator’s viewpoint. The article can be considered as a top level analysis.
For quite some time several companies were doing research on this topic and also developed version of their products. As every company has their own algorithm for transformation so every transformation product has some good sides as well as there are some flaws also. It is obvious to happen because there is no standard defined for the transformation task. Recently Vodafone initiated the project named MICS (Mobile Internet and Content Services) where the rendering service is powered by WTE (Web Translation Engine). This service allows any WAP2.0 mobile to access real web content from the internet. This Vodafone initiative next became a W3C initiative to work for finding out the standard solution for the Content Transformation task. Content Transformation Task Force is working to achieve this goal which is a great initiative and research of course. But here in this article I will try to analyze (of course my own viewpoint) several issues related to the conversion of the Web to Mobile Web.
Content Transcoding Initiatives: There are so far many initiatives are taken separately by different companies. Below are some initiatives to be quoted:
- Mini-Opera
- Mowser
- Widerweb
- Movila
- Vodafone (MICS)
Content Transformation:The real scenario
A subscriber wants to browse a website (which was developed for the Desktop users, not for the mobile users). He just types the URL and tries to visit the website. All the sites coding and scripting will pass through this Content Transcoding Proxy and will be converted to the respective mobile specific coding so that this site fits (as much as possible) in that specific small screen (suppose Nokia 6300).
Expectations from Content Transcoding Proxy
A website (desktop version) is composed of many objects (HTML Scripting, Static Images, Animated Images, Flash files, streaming media etc). A subscriber generally expects to get almost all the contents and the services offered by that website irrespective of from where he is browsing. Does the Content Transcoding proxy ensure that much transcoding ?
Mobile Version of a real desktop website: Whose Interest
Content transcoding proxy will process a desktop site and will present the mobile version of that site to the requesting mobile terminal. The question is: someone is doing business over the internet. He had a desktop site. But did not have any mobile version of their business site. So this is why the users could not access the site from mobile and could not purchase goods or something using mobile. So then this company thought to invest some more and wanted to develop their Mobile version of the same portal. In this portal they decided not to put so many words. So they prepared a short description (to make it suitable for mobile) of the long story and published that. Now the question is: Areall the above tasks fall under the scope of the transcoding proxy? Or it is the responsibility of that company?
Transcoding Proxy: How operators may think
- Operational: Generally management will be happy to know that people will just type any address and the proxy will make it a mobile version and deliver it to the subscriber. And if the management somehow involves CAPEX to purchase the proxy of course they will promote this specific concept to the subscribers. And then if some day some subscribers walk down to the customer care to complain that: I tried to log into my bank account (or somewhere, may be a flash site) but I could not. In this situation of course they will blame the operator. Also the operational people will be in a great problem. Because they will not be able to answer the questions why the site I was visiting from my PC is not looking the same here in my mobile.
- One algorithm fits all: The question is: in reality how much transcoding is possible? To my knowledge what I understand is: of course it is an algorithm which will work behind to convert a website into a mobile site. There are different types of websites are available in this world. How much conditions that specific algorithm needs to consider so that a general algorithm can transcode almost all the websites in the world?
- Content Adaptation: Also how many different categories of contents the proxy will be able to adopt (ie. Converting the portal contents into device specific formats etc. Like adopting the image size, converting the audio files into supported format etc.)?
- Positioning: Where the proxy may be positioned in the network? May be it will be connected with the WAP Gateway. Or it may be linked with the GGSN too. Or it may be included in the WAP gateway as a rich transcoding module. So except the last one in all other cases the operator needs to purchase the box.
Conclusion:
Research is something which makes the impossible to possible. Something seems not necessary today may be very much important tomorrow. So of course research is most welcome but without service interruption. We start with something, may be we can get some more precious findouts. So lets hope for the best.
