Background
The mobile sector has enjoyed rapid growth all over the world since digital services were first launched in the 1990’s. There has been a lot of innovation around new services yet, despite the launch of many new services, it appears that calls and text messages remain the predominant applications.
Voice usage is likely to grow strongly through 2010, because of a rapid growth in the number of connected people worldwide and falling call charges. By 2010, total voice usage could rise to over 12 trillion minutes per annum, up from under nine trillion today. Callers in the developed world will likely abandon their fixed phone, in favour of mobile. In a developed region such as Europe, 25 percent of homes are forecast to have relinquished their fixed line.
By 2010, mobile broadband is likely to gain ground on fixed broadband in terms of the number of connections.
Challenges
As industries mature the dash for diversification begins. The mobile industry now generates more than a trillion dollars and has well over two billion customers . It has for several years been seeking a new killer application. Mobile internet, machine-to-machine communications and multimedia messaging are just some of the new services that the mobile sector has tried to popularize. Telecom operators are looking for new opportunities to enter new markets and to increase the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). They are in need of innovative ideas in order to grasp the huge potential of their SIM ‘real estate’.
The use of mobile payments or m-payments is an idea that has lived for a few years now. It has not yet been a big success though and there is currently no clear business case for banks or mobile operators to invest heavily in this area, especially when talking about m-payments at the point of sale.
However, mobile payments are not the only application the mobile sector has tried to popularize; there are a number of ideas of mobile applications that one can think of.
Another major challenge of mobile operators is the existence of very large portions of its subscribers being virtually anonymous individuals because they are subscribed to a “pre-.paid” model that does not require them to disclose their identity. This limits the usefulness of the data collected in relation to that individual for the purposes of increasing the ARPU. Enabling the identification of these individuals is at the heart of any well-thought-out Telco strategy today.
The WISeKey solution
In the future, mobile operators could provide services to upstream service providers and end-stream end-users by enabling them to interact using a “Telco platform”. This would enable the Telco operators to collect from either or both sides and not only from the downstream customers as it is at present.
The Telco platform would predominantly be used to distribute third-party services such as Applications, Services, Information and Advertisement.
In order for upstream and downstream customers of the Telco Platform to connect to each other in an efficient manner, WISeKey is seeking to introduce the concept of the e-Identity in the Mobile world. With the WISeKey e-Identity, which can reside on the SIM of the phone, be embedded in an application, be associated with an online authentication mechanism or other innovative approach that can be enabled through WISeKey´s offering. The end-customer will be able to set his profile and connect to upstream providers which offer the sought-for value-added services, by uniquely and easily identifying himself with the e-Identity. On the other hand, the e-Identity technology will allow the upstream providers to target very specific user groups. An example can be the notification of travellers when their plane or train is delayed. Of course, the public transport operator wants only to notify the right persons, and looks for more cost efficient ways when sending an sms. Another application can be targeted advertising, online betting, loyalty points management, physical access control linked to the eID, etc.
WISeKey’s technical solutions that would enable these sorts of functionalities are:
- Mobile digital signatures
- Semantic validation
- Profile manager
- WISeAuth – SMS OTP, Certificate
- Social Network platform
- Mobile payments (mostly in emerging markets)
Current partnerships / projects