Wireless Village

Wireless Village is a set of specifications for mobile instant messaging and presence services. It is intended to be a standard for cellphones and mobile devices to use these services across platforms.

Many wireless phones now include mobile instant messaging capabilities designed to hook into messaging services using IMPS on a carrier's network, formerly known as the Wireless Village protocol. Those phones implement it as an IM icon on the phone, which is typically renamed and customized by the cellphone carrier or removed completely if not supported at the network level. Most Nokia and Motorola phones have that feature, as do many Sony Ericsson phones.

The white paper describes the service:

"Where possible, the protocol makes use of existing Internet and Web technologies. These technologies are implemented widely and are well tested, so their use within the protocol ensure easy implementation and interoperability testing. XML, the Extensible Markup Language, is rapidly emerging as the lingua franca for representing structured data over the Web. To the extent possible, the protocol uses XML to represent the protocol data being exchanged during an IMPS session. IMPS activities in the IETF IMPP have received widespread interest throughout the industry. Although it is still in development, to the extent possible, the Wireless Village initiative will support the CPIM draft and build upon it. Other useful standards in this space include the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) for registering the format of the IMPS protocol messages."

An announcement was made when this service was conceived by Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia. The specification is maintained by the Open Mobile Alliance, and is currently at version 1.3 of the protocol.

As of now, only a few public services exist using Wireless Village. Any unlocked phone can be configured to use these services, and therefore connect to other instant messaging services if implemented.

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