Over-the-Air Collaboration

Bell Atlantic Mobile (BAM) recently joined forces with Motorola and Phone.com (formerly Unwired Planet) to offer customers Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)-based over-the-air provisioning capabilities for CDMA handsets. Phone.com provides the software that is needed for the venture, and Motorola serves as one of BAM's largest handset vendors. The idea is to create a standardized system that will offer electronic customer care to subscribers and provide for managed roaming.

"We're trying to get the CDG (CDMA Development Group) to back the development of this so CDMA carriers will have access to the over-the-air provisioning," said Andrea Linskey, BAM spokesperson. "The key for (BAM) is that we will be able to manage roaming. We will be able to add and delete SIDs (system identifiers) without having to inconvenience the customer by having them in for any new programming."

The standard was developed to provide customers the ability to roam outside their territory and allows for changes once the handsets hit the streets. Currently, there are phones on the market that allow BAM to enter a preferred roaming list, but changes can't be made because the software is in the handset. The collaboration would change that.

"With over-the-air provisioning, we could add a company to our preferred roaming list on a tri-mode phone, for example, and it would be transparent to the customer," Linskey said. "They wouldn't have to come in for reprogramming, and we could do it all switch-based."

The collaboration also would allow for expanded sales channels, providing an off-the-shelf product to customers.

"It could conceivably be an over-the-air product that is shrink-wrapped -- a phone in a box that you take home, enter some prompt information to and have it automatically activated," Linskey said.

Some question whether the lack of human contact or signature verification could create problems. Linskey said there would be a "break-the-seal" type of information-based system put in place where customers would provide their names and billing information through the over-the-air activation process to secure customer privacy and implement future security measures.

Skeptics also worry about man-in-the-middle attacks and wonder whether they will become a problem for over-the-air provisioning. These security-breach attacks could occur if the authentication keys are programmed over the radio interface, making secret information available to the public. These attacks are not considered to be a high risk, but the potential is there for customer, and thus carrier, vulnerability. Linskey pointed out that the service still is under development so it would be hard to talk about any significant roadblocks other than what have been seen in a testing environment.

"The challenges right now are to get more handset manufacturers to produce handsets that will be able to accept the WAP information," she said.

In the end, this over-the-air-provisioning standard should serve its intended purpose -- to save carriers money and increase customer care by providing a cheaper distribution system.

"This is the right move for (BAM)," she said. "It will ultimately save us money, particularly with roaming costs, but also from a customer-care standpoint." Linskey also pointed out that the provisioning will serve as a cost-saving benefit to company call centers when dealing with simple routine questions.

Wireless phone use in public places now is spawning more than disgruntled looks and opinion pieces in newspapers. The Daily Telegraph London reported that a businessman in Hamburg, Germany, was clubbed to death with a beer bottle when he refused to stop using his wireless phone in a beer garden. The man received three calls and made calls to contact friends. Other patrons violently objected to the phone's ringing and demanded that the phone be turned off. A fight ensued, and although the 42-year-old man escaped from his attacker, he was dead by the time the ambulance arrived.