Telespree and VeriSign deliver self-service activation

ATLANTA--

What began as an idea for disposable phones found its way into the U.S. wireless market this week as a client/server solution for device self-activation from Telespree Communications and VeriSign. The companies announced this week that MetroPCS will use the Self-Service Set-Up service they jointly developed.

Self-Service Set-Up is a suite of automated activation, account management and self-care applications that guide consumers through an interactive process that manages wireless device activation or reactivation, customer account set-up, ongoing account maintenance, rate plan changes and promotions using only the mobile device itself without the aid of a sales clerk or call center.

Telespree, which began its life developing disposable phones, used software developed for those phones to create a platform that operators can use to automate the activation process for new phones and services. The platform consists of server elements that reside in VeriSign’s network, or the carrier's, and the Secure Instant Wireless Access (SIWA) micro-client that resides as a SIM toolkit application on the wireless device.

“It may have been developed for disposable phones, but the feedback from [operators] was that the platform was more valuable this way,” said Bill deKay, CEO of Telespree. “So we developed a patented methodology for both CDMA and GSM operators.”

VeriSign will host the application as a network-based, self-service solution The new self-care applications include Plan Changes, Feature Changes, Add-A-Phone, Telephone Number Changes, and Handset and Warranty Swaps.

Last month, Telespree teamed with Axalto, formerly Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals, to integrate its self-service wireless automation software onto Axalto's Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards. Axalto will add Telespree's Self-Service Set-Up applet to its Customer SIM Card Library, making the software part of Axalto's standard portfolio of products and services, making it available for all GSM devices.

“It’s a very thin client that operates at lower than the application layer so it allows us to perform secure transactions and communicate between the device and our server,” deKay said. “We built our client into an Axalto toolkit so we could deploy it in all GSM devices.”