UK's first WAP phones arrive

The UK's first Wireless Application Protocol phone went on sale Thursday. The Orange Nokia 7110e uses WAP 1.1 to access Orange's suite of online services.

The phone costs £129, and until 31 January there will be no charge for accessing the multimedia services. After this introductory period access to the WAP services will count against a subscribers' inclusive minutes and will cost 5p per minute thereafter.

Users will be able to access a range of services, including news from ITN and Sporting Life, traffic information, entertainment listings, access to Thomson Directories databases and holiday offers from lastminute.com. From early next year Orange will be introducing a range of financial services, including banking from NatWest.

The Orange-badged Nokia handset features a microbrowser, a central navi-roller wheel for browsing menus and services, and predictive text input software from Tegic. A sliding mouthpiece gives instant answering, and it has built-in fax and data capability. Orange claims that the battery offers up to three hours of talk time and six days on standby.

The phone is only available to Orange subscribers now, but Nokia will make it available to the general public in the next few weeks.