Power of the third

Orlando, Fla.--“More information is the only enemy of a bad decision,” said Kathy Abernathy at the Wireless Internet Caucus. The FCC commissioner kicked off the second annual Wireless Internet Caucus meeting where the group identified action teams and their agendas for building an information base and a place to share industry knowledge and experience.

In an effort to speed the growth of wireless data that has been long promised and barely delivered, the caucus broke out seven areas of focus. The action teams are: internetworking, messaging, presence & location, privacy and security, billing, enterprise and downloadable content. The teams will meet throughout the week and encourage participation from Wireless 2002 attendees.

The Internetworking action team, headed by Tom Chatt, Sun Microsystems, will define a system that enables the federation of personal profile information and recommend an approach to address issues of authentication, authorization and accounting.

Greg Santoro, Nextel, leads the Messaging action team. The team plans to identify, segment and define the typical messaging customer and their corresponding usage needs. In addition, the team will uncover common methods to support the exchange of services across disparate networks and network protocols.

The Downloadable Content action team, headed up by Infospace’s John Arnold, plans to draft a white paper addressing the key challenges and issues around the user experience and recommend design considerations inherent in packaging third-party content.

The Location & Presence action team, led by Joe Sipher of Handspring, seeks to figure ways to monetize the data.

Jim Straight, Verizon, leads the Enterprise action team, and will develop unification of technology strategies and education programs to go after the business market.

In addition to discussing the potential billing strategies for wireless data, Chase Franklin, QPass, and the Billing action team plan to look into fraud , reconciliation and the user interface. The Privacy and Security team, headed by Seven’s Trevor Fiatal, will investigate all current initiatives and deliver a white paper that conducts an education and informational analysis of these two topics.

Coming of age first as a communications lawyer, then working in governmental affairs for Airtouch, Abernathy understands the complicated market of wireless. For that reason, she wants to encourage the power of the third to create competition with wireline and cable in the delivery of data. Citing the example of the cellular duopoly’s reaction to a third competitor, she said the same thing can occur in today’s broadband market.

“Without that third nothing gets done,” Abernathy said.