Big three come together on securing the mobile Web
Mobile telecommunications giants Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola announced plans Tuesday to co-operate on the development on standard for secure mobile electronic transactions.
The trio are expected to release technical details of the project by the end of May and say other companies will be invited to contribute to the development of the standard. The companies hope to have formulated the framework by the summer follwing input from other firms.
Key features of this new open standard will include security functions built into WAP including WTLS (Wireless Transport Layer Security), WIM (Wireless Identification Module) and wireless Public Key technologies (PKI) technologies.
The government is currently auctioning off the licences needed to operate Third Generation (3G) or Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS) networks. These will allow service providers to deliver greatly increased bandwidth to mobile Internet devices.
Mobile Internet devices are, through the migration to this technology, expected to become an increasingly important part of Internet-based business, offering a new and more user-friendly way for Internet users to spend online. The success of this emerging technology consequently depends heavily on customer confidence in the security of online transactions.
President of Nokia Mobile Phones, Matti Alahuhta outlines just how important this new project in a statement issued at today's announcement.
"Integrating security and transaction applications on a common core standard and platform will create global mass market for mobile e-business. This will benefit all participants from various industries within the value chain, in addition to hundreds of millions of consumers throughout the world."
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