Genie's Wap views soar

The Wap network is getting busier

The UK telecoms company BT has reported strong growth for its Wap mobile internet service.

BT's service, Genie, saw traffic for its Wap service rise 513% in the quarter to the end of December.

We knew Wap would be popular but it is safe to say it has outstripped our expectations

Damian Peachey
BT's Genie

Total page impressions rose from 10.2 million in September to 62.5 million in December.

The number of people registered with the service in the UK rose 38% over the same period to more than 1.6 million.

Genie said it was planning to further increase capacity after earlier complaints that it had not been able to cope with demand.

Genie's Damian Peachey told BBC News Online that despite all the criticism Wap was a technology that "can go places".

Text messages

He said that they were still breaking down the figures between the proportion of page views generated by emails being sent and received.

"We knew Wap would be popular but it is safe to say it has outstripped our expectations," said Mr Peachey.

Text messaging is not included within the 62 million figure: Genie expects there to have been more than 200 million text messages sent in December.

On Monday, BT Cellnet reported record growth in quarterly customer numbers.

It said that 10% of its wireless customers, about one million, had been converted to Wap enabled handsets, with many of the phones being handed out free in deals with partners such as the online bank Egg.