Bear with me for a moment if you are reading this on a PC, or indeed if you continue to insist on accessing this data file on printed pages. It's the mobile-phone-enabled reader who currently carries the hopes of large chunks of the "content" industry. You are still a select bunch - a few hundred reading the Guardian last week through mobile-phone screens, amounting to no more than 2,000 pages viewed a day - but you are the next electronic vanguard.
Nokia says that mobile subscribers will rise from 600m to a billion by 2005 - compared with 130m computer-based web users. As we go about our increasingly mobile lives (43% of white-collar workers are "location independent", according to the Gartner Group), we want access now to the proliferation of data that net take-up continues to fuel.
The wireless application protocol - Wap - is the industry standard for the delivery of mobile data, and it is creating opportunities that make the web look dated. Whether you are waiting for a train or sitting through a conference, Wap allows you to dial in and place a bet, book a cinema ticket, confide with a doctor and order a pizza.
It is a challenge that has been taxing news providers such as the Guardian, whose editorial strategies have long been based on adding value to readers who are assumed to get their main news from the 9pm TV broadcast, or the 8am radio bulletin. In this new marketplace, they will check the headlines, respond to job ads and check the weather when it suits them.
That is why this newspaper - through its Guardian Unlimited network of websites - has made a strategic decision to offer its content in as many ways as readers wish to gain access to it. You can now read the Guardian's view of the world on a phone, on a "personal digital assistant" (PDA) such as a 3Com Palm, and, from next month, on interactive digital television. Just as we were getting used to the challenges of delivering to web browsers, along come a new set of issues, ranging from how we display a 2,000-word analysis on a two-inch screen, to whether we ought to see ourselves less as a text medium and more as an audiovisual way of delivering news.
Reading the Guardian on a first-generation Wap handset is rather less speedy than flicking through a few broadsheet pages. But the interactive elements are growing. We're developing our film postcode search, for instance, so you'll be able to plan your evening out while sitting on the train, and also letting you personalise your news interests and search the Guardian's job database. The Nokia 7110 is the new model that has gained the most attention, but any Wap phone will work. If Guardian Unlimited is not on your preset menu of choices (BT Cellnet subscribers will find Guardian Unlimited preset, Orange subscribers should do so within a week or two, and later Vodafone users), you can set up a bookmark by entering www.newsunlimited.co.uk/wml. This will take you to the front page of our Wap menu, which will offer you a further set of choices, from business news to politics. It costs you nothing to access our content; the network carriers' standard charge is 5p a minute.
You can get an idea of how the interface appears by pointing your web browser to www.gelon.net, and entering www.newsunlimited.co.uk/wml in the area that provides a Wap emulator. A site such as AvantGo http://avantgo.com will let you plug your PDA into your PC and download whichever data feeds you select. The full News Unlimited content is available, although you may select, say, the politics and arts feeds for reading later on a plane or where access is limited to mobiles. The industry estimates 5 million PDA units in Britain within three years.
From next month, subscribers to Cable & Wireless's digital interactive television channels will gain access to large parts of Guardian Unlimited, alongside other news providers such as ITN and the Manchester Evening News, and a range of other services from games to horoscopes. Click on the "interactive" option on your handset, and you can select news headlines from News Unlimited or from other sites (from cricket headlines to film reviews). Cable & Wireless has already launched its digital service in places such as Watford and Bromley, and will roll it out in Kensington and Chelsea and beyond from next month.
Will these new delivery channels eventually make the newspaper redundant? Probably not - it remains as portable and cheap to access as any mobile device, and a fall in classified revenue, rather than growth in competing delivery channels, is what would ultimately determine the print edition's future. Will it change what the Guardian is? Probably, if fewer of you choose to access it in a medium that allows easy navigation of long and complex articles. But for the moment, as the techno-world moves rapidly on, it seems that you want your news to move with you.
• David Rowan is editor of Guardian Unlimited
