Although each user has their own computer, their emails and personal information mangement (PIM) details were hosted on the central server. Two of the most useful features are sharing contacts - stored in the "global address book" - and being able to view colleagues' calendars and book appointments with them. One needs to understand the Exchange conversion to understand how revolutionary being able to access all of this from a cellphone is.

That is now possible using one of my favourite new technologies, general packet radio service (GPRS). It is an always-on connection to the Internet - that MTN has launched under the brand name MTNdataLIVE - for which you pay only for the data you send and receive. What is also important is that is allows access to the Exchange network via cellphone and not using a handheld computer or personal digital assistant (PDA). With the right kind of GRPS-enabled cellphone, you can browse your email, find contacts and check your calendar.

The cellular provider has joined forces with Microsoft and Ericsson, whose equipment is used in its network, to bring out Office X-Change. For the last month, I have been using the Sony Ericsson T68i to read my email over GPRS, but with this new interface to the corporate Exchange server, you can do a whole lot more. Using WAP and a few passwords, you can access your corporate network, looked up any appointments in your calendar and find details about a contact.

When it initially emerged, wireless application protocol (WAP) got a bad name for being too slow, but should not have taken the blame as the cellular networks were designed for voice not data traffic, and these poor data speeds negated all its advantages. Telecoms companies the world over learnt the lesson of over- hyping new technology the hard way - the so-called "WAP-lash" - and as a result all attention has been focused on the services and features it makes possible.

WAP is still around and is a very useful means of accessing data. Remember it was designed as a way to "port" or transfer web content to the small screen of a cellphone. MTN demonstrated this and other real world uses of technology this week in an unusual but compelling way. Driving the snazzy new MINI Cooper at the University of Pretoria's sprawling sports centre, journalists went through an obstacle course where tasks where set requiring effectively using the cellphone technology to over come them. With a Motorola Accompli 008, which is part PDA with its touchscreen and Java capabilities, reporters had to download ring tones, send SMSs, even transfer airtime to another phone.

The latter is particularly useful for, say, a mother to transfer talk time to children on pay as you go. One task required sending and SMS to open a gate - the receiving cellphone was rigged to a lightbulb that went on, but had the boom been a mechanical gate, it could have sent the same electronic signal to open it. Down a long dusty, potholed road, past farm houses, tractors and bemused labourers was a table in the middle of nowhere.

On it was an entire small office: a laptop computer, telephone, fax machine, printer and one cold MTN demonstrator. I tapped out an email on the Motorola, sent it using WAP and it was received and printed out in front of me. What was remarkable was that he was running everything off a car battery and through a small box that gave him all the telecommunications connectivity he needed. MTN calls it their "Instant Office" and it is aimed at the burgeoning small and medium businesses market.

It can connect three telephones and a computer, and can be up and running in no time. Considering how long it takes for a landline to be connected, this is an instant boon, as is the ability to set up shop anywhere you want and move offices should a small company expand.

"Wireless mobile solutions are the new trend," says George Bongi, MTN group executive for marketing. "We are selling solutions not SIM cards."

He says that the return on investment and the running costs of such a system work out to be cheaper than using a landline, which may have cheaper running costs (the price per call than cellular) but have higher set up and maintenance costs. But the Instant Office also allows you to use another wireless technology called high speed circuit switch data (HSCSD), which has been branded MTNdataFAST.

Unlike GPRS, which is an always-on technology that is ideal for transfers of small amounts of data and is billed by those amounts, HSCSD is payable by the amount of time you spend online, like landlines, and uses four times as many "connections" to the wireless network as GPRS.

It is therefore much faster and better suited to downloading stuff from the Internet or sending and receiving large amounts of emails. It struck me that the MINI is an apt analogy of where cellphone technology is going. When the tiny automobile first appeared in the 1960s, it was a bare bones car, encasing the basic structure but it was a car and it drove well.

A few years ago cellphones were at a similar point, with small, black and white screens and few features, while right now that is where WAP is. But where they are going - both the coming data speeds and the soon to be full-colour handsets with a built-in camera - and what you will be able to do with them is not unlike the quantum leap the Mini has experienced.

The current reinvigoration of interest in WAP is because cellphone users require more than one means of accessing data, be it an email address, a new ringtone or your horoscope. WAP is a so-called "pull" technology that lets the user go and fetch the information they want. WAP sites are much like web pages, although they are mostly text based. For instance SMS, or short messaging system, is another way that this can be done.

By sending an SMS to a service like MTN's Fetch, with a request for information on horoscopes, the latest lottery numbers or share prices, this information will be sent back to you as a text message.

You can do the same with interactive voice response (IVR), the "talking menu" that lets you select options by pressing specific keys or now, using MTN's voice recognition, just say the name of the share you want to check on, for instance. The future of cellular technology are a bit like the new, dazzling, gadget-laden Mini dashboard, which once only featured a speedometer and fuel gauge, but now looks a bit like a big cellphone itself.

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