APPLICATIONS OF GPRS

A wide range of corporate and consumer applications are enabled by nonvoice mobile services such as SMS and GPRS.
CHAT
Because of its synergy with the Internet, GPRS would allow mobile users to participate fully in existing Internet chat groups rather than needing to set up their own groups that are dedicated to mobile users. Since the number of participants is an important factor determining the value of participation in the newsgroup, the use of GPRS here would be advantageous.
TEXTUAL AND VISUAL INFORMATION
You can receive information, which is in the form of not only text, but maps, graphs or other visuals.
STILL IMAGES
Still images such as photographs, pictures, postcards, greeting cards and presentations, static web pages can be sent and received over the mobile network as they are across fixed telephone networks. It will be possible with GPRS to post images from a digital camera connected to a GPRS radio device directly to an Internet site, allowing near real-time desktop publishing.
MOVING IMAGES
You will also be able to receive moving images and receive transmission from anywhere.
WEB BROWSING
You will also be able to use the GPRS for browsing the net. DOCUMENT SHARING/ COLLABORATIVE WORKING Mobile data facilitates document sharing and remote collaborative working. This lets different people in different places work on the same document at the same time.
AUDIO
Dictating to a mobile phone, would simply not give sufficient voice quality to allow transmission to be broadcast or analyzed for the purposes of background noise analysis or voice printing. Since even short voice clips occupy large file sizes, GPRS or other high speed mobile data services are needed.
JOB DISPATCH
Non-voice mobile services can be used to assign and communicate new jobs from office-based staff to mobile field staff. Customers typically telephone a call center whose staff take the call and categorize it. Those calls requiring a visit by field sales or service representative can then be escalated to those mobile workers.
CORPORATE EMAIL
With up to half of employees typically away from their desks at any one time, it is important for them to keep in touch with the office by extending the use of corporate email systems beyond an employee's office PC. Since GPRS capable devices will be more widespread in corporations than amongst the general mobile phone user community, there are likely to be more corporate email applications using GPRS than Internet email ones whose target market is more general.
INTERNET EMAIL
Internet email services come in the form of a gateway service where the messages are not stored, or mailbox services in which messages are stored. In the case of gateway services, the wireless email platform simply translates the message from SMTP, the Internet email protocol, into SMS and sends to the SMS Center. In the case of mailbox email services, the emails are actually stored and the user gets a notification on their mobile phone and can then retrieve the full email by dialing in to collect it, forward it and so on.
By linking Internet email with an alert mechanism such as SMS or GPRS, users can be notified when a new email is received.
REMOTE LAN ACCESS
Remote LAN applications encompasses access to any applications that an employee would use when sitting at their desk, such as access to the intranet, their corporate email services such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes and to database applications running on Oracle or Sybase or whatever. The mobile terminal such as handheld or laptop computer has the same software programs as the desktop on it, or cut down client versions of the applications accessible through the corporate LAN. This application area is therefore likely to be a conglomeration of remote access to several different information types- email, intranet, databases. This information may all be accessible through web browsing tools, or require proprietary software applications on the mobile device. The ideal bearer for Remote LAN Access depends on the amount of data being transmitted, but the speed and latency of GPRS make it ideal.
FILE TRANSFER
You may download sizeable data across the mobile network. This data could be a presentation document for a traveling salesperson, an appliance manual for a service engineer or a software application such as Adobe Acrobat Reader to read documents. The source of this information could be one of the Internet communication methods such as FTP (File Transfer Protocol), telnet, http or Java- or from a proprietary database or legacy platform. Irrespective of source and type of file being transferred, this kind of application tends to be bandwidth intensive. It therefore requires a high-speed mobile data service such as GPRS, EDGE or 3GSM to run satisfactorily across a mobile network.
HOME AUTOMATION
Home automation applications combine remote security with remote control. Basically, you can monitor your home from wherever you are- on the road, on holiday, or at the office. If your burglar alarm goes off, not only do you get alerted, but you get to go live and see who are perpetrators are and perhaps even lock them in. You can program your video, switch your oven on so that the preheating is complete by the time you arrive home and so on. Your GPRS capable mobile phone really does become like the remote control devices we use today for our television, video, hi-fi and so on. As the Internet Protocol (IP) will soon be everywhere- not just in mobile phones because of GPRS but all manner of household appliances and in every machine- these devices can be addressed and instructed. A key enabler for home automation applications will be Bluetooth, which allows disparate devices to inter work.