BT in Wap phone trouble

The Wap network is busy right now...

BT Cellnet, the UK mobile phone operator, experienced a dramatic collapse of its Wap phone service over the weekend, after the failure of a single piece of equipment.

Wap - mobile phones using the wireless application protocol - allow customers to browse a stripped-down version of the internet. Just a few months after launch, more than half a million people have taken up the Cellnet service.

Cellnet spokeswoman Carole Williams said a piece of equipment routing Wap requests to the firm's servers had failed on Saturday morning, and it took engineers until Monday morning to track down the fault and repair it.

During that time Cellnet's Genie Wap service was operating at 50% of capacity.

Half of all Wap calls received could not be directed to the requested pages, she said.

Frustrated customers

Many customers were left in the dark, as helpline technicians blamed the fault on the success of BT Cellnet's Easter promotion of Wap phones.

Others complained to BBC News Online that they spent more than half an hour in a queue for the technical help line of the Genie Wap service - a premium rate call costing 50p a minute when accessed on a normal telephone landline.

One customer demanded that Cellnet should compensate its customers "for the inconvenience and the money they have spent in calling your premium rate line".

Cellnet has promised to look at each compensation claim individually.

Spokeswoman Carole Williams said that engineers were now investigating the exact cause of the breakdown and make sure that it would not repeat itself.

By the end of March, 620,000 people had subscribed to Cellnet's Wap service. She said the Easter promotion boosted numbers considerably as customers were lured by an offer of a free Wap phone if they opted for a pay-as-you-go service or a £50 cash-back if they subscribed to Wap services.

BT Cellnet's rivals, Vodafone, Orange and One2One, all offer Wap services as well.

The importance of wireless internet services is expected to grow dramatically when companies introduce third-generation mobile phones in a few years time.

Last week, the UK government raised more than £22bn from mobile phone companies eager to obtain licences for the new technology.