SOAP. Transport Protocols: It is essential for the acceptance of Web Services that they are based on established Internet infrastructure. This in fact imposes the usage of of the HTTP, SMTP and FTP protocols based on the TCP/IP family of transports. Messaging Protocol: The format of messages exchanged between Web Services clients and Web Services should be vendor neutral and should not carry details about the technology used to implement the service. Also, the message format should allow for extensions and different bindings to specific transport protocols. SOAP and ebXML Transport are specifications which fulfill these requirements. We expect that the W3C XML Protocol Working Group defines a successor standard.
SOAP is not the transport protocol. SOAP is the data encapsulation protocol that is used but the transport protocol is fairly unlimited. Generally HTTP is the most common transport protocol used though you could conceivanly use things like SMTP or any others. SOAP is not dependant on any single transport protocol or OS, it is a syntactical and logical definition, not a transport protocol.