When you connect to a wireless network and request access to a Web site that supports WAP, your mobile phone sends the request via radio waves to the nearest cell, where it's routed through the Internet to a gateway server. The gateway server translates the request into the Web's standard HTTP format and sends it to the Web site.

When the site responds, it returns HTML documents to the gateway server, where they're converted to WML and routed to the nearest antenna. The antenna sends the data via radio waves to your WAP device and the microbrowser displays the page.