October 11, 1999 Web posted at: 1:22 p.m. EDT (1722 GMT) by Mary Lisbeth D'Amico

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MUNICH (IDG) -- German users who like to take part in online auctions will soon be able to do so while standing in line for the bus or on their lunch break in the park, rather than just at their PCs.

EBay's German subsidiary, Nokia and Mannesmann Mobilfunk have teamed up to offer a service that will allow users to actively participate in eBay's online auctions via their mobile phone handsets, said Karel Dörner, one of eBay Germany's founding partners.

EBay in June expanded its European operations when it acquired German online auctioneer Alando.de, as the base for its subsidiary in Germany.

The service will be based on WAP (wireless application protocol), a software specification that enables users to view pared-down Web content via mobile phones and other devices that are WAP-enabled.

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The offer - available to users of Mannesmann Mobilfunk's D2 mobile network -- is available immediately, Dörner said yesterday. D2 is one of Germany's top two mobile networks, with some 8 million subscribers.

Not many users will be able to take advantage of the offer, however, until WAP-enabled handsets become widely available on the German market. Finland's Nokia shipped its first WAP-compliant phones earlier this month. They are expected in Germany before year's end, in time for the holiday season, said Christian Schwolow, a spokesman for D2.

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To use the auction service, users will dial into a special number which gives them access to what D2 is calling its WAP-portal, a page that lists different services and content offerings from D2 and content providers with whom it has partnered, Schwolow said. Users will be charged 39 pfennigs (US 21 cents) per minute for as long as they are connected to that number.

The data transmission speed over WAP phones is no faster than what is now available through the SMS (short message service) -- a protocol that allows mobile phone users to receive messages at 9.6Kbps. Vendors maintain, however, that WAP pages, written in a special language called WML (wireless markup language), are easier to call up and view than SMS messages. Unlike with SMS, users will also be able to interact with WAP pages.

Real improvements in downloading speeds won't come until roughly the third quarter of next year, when a technology called GPRS (general packet radio service) is implemented in existing GSM (global system for mobile communications) networks. GPRS will initially enable mobile phones to transmit and receive data at speeds of up to roughly 100Kbps.

D2 expects some 1 million WAP handsets to be in use by its subscribers at the end of 2000, Schwolow said. The mobile carrier has also struck deals with content providers like Yahoo Germany to provide news and other information for WAP devices.

Mary Lisbeth D'Amico is Munich correspondent for the IDG New Service.