Helsinki, Finland — (press release excerpt) — the Kannel 1.0.2 WAP gateway has received the official WAP 1.1 certification by WAP Forum, the international organisation overseeing the development and interoperability of the WAP specification suite. This certification makes Kannel the world's first Open Source WAP… gateway, which is recognised as fully compatible with the WAP 1.1 protocol, providing maximum interoperability with existing WAP 1.1 clients.

The WAP Forum certification means that a WAP product meets or exceeds the requirements of the WAP specification suite. It also means that the certified product can use the WAP Certified logo, assuring users of the integrity and interoperability of the gateway.

“After putting a lot of effort into developing Kannel we here at Wapit are proud to see it among the first five WAP gateways in the world to receive WAP 1.1 certification. As Kannel is the only non-proprietary gateway to get this certification this proves the strength within open source development”, says Terho Laakso, Vice President of Products at Wapit Ltd. “Kannel's performance figures demonstrate the evident quality of open source projects. Based on the results from Wapit's test environment, we claim Kannel to be the fastest SMS and WAP gateway on the market, capable of handling several hundreds of requests per second”.

“This certification solidifies Kannel's status among open source projects, as it is the only open source project that has an WAP 1.1 certification”, says Lars Wirzenius, the head architect of Kannel. “Now we can say with certainty that Kannel is at the very least on the same line with commercial gateways”.

Kannel supports the most commonly used SMS center protocols and works on both Unix and Windows platforms. Kannel is in production use at Wapit Ltd. in Finland and in many other parts of the world, both as an SMS and WAP gateway. Kannel is a necessary part of the wireless networking infrastructure as it connects mobile devices to WAP servers. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) is used to provide services on mobile phones by enabling mobile devices to function as simple web browsers. In addition, Kannel works as an SMS gateway, allowing service implementation to a larger segment of mobile customers. The Kannel project was launched in July 1999 by Wapit Ltd. to produce an Open Source gateway for SMS and WAP use.

 
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