Editor’s Note: Welcome to Reality Check, a feature for RCR Wireless News’ weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile content industry to give their insights into the marketplace. In the coming weeks look for columns from Laura Marriott of the Mobile Marketing Association and more.
Next week in Las Vegas, prior to the CTIA Wireless 2008 show, CTIA’s Wireless Internet Caucus (WIC) will hold the first of its bi-annual, face-to-face open meetings (Monday, March 31, LVCC Rm. N260, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.). The mission of the WIC is to identify impediments to adoption of mobile data products and services and, where appropriate, seek to develop and implement industry-wide solutions.
The WIC is headed by a Leadership Council comprising representatives who have profit-and-loss responsibility for mobile data within their companies and whose companies are from across the mobile data ecosystem. The working groups – Action Teams – will provide a read out on the status of current initiatives at the open meetings, giving anyone with an interest in any of the areas of the ongoing initiatives, a chance to comment on the past developments and future directions.
In advance of the meetings, in order to provide a preview of the discussions for those who were considering attending, I thought I would use this month’s column to provide readers with an update of WIC activities, reported out by WIC Action Team.
CODE SCAN ACTION TEAM
The mission of the Code Scan Action Team is to drive the development of industry standards and assist in speeding a camera phone code scan product to market in the US. The team is working together to enable unified wireless industry communication to external stakeholders (such as consumer goods, media, and retailers) that need to hear of a unified approach by wireless operators (technologically and systemically) prior to committing to their initial capital expenditure, technology selection and marketing resources. These external investments are required to drive actual utilization of the camera phone Code Scan technology infrastructure.
Overview and status update:
In January 2008, the Code Scan team let a RFI for the purposes of getting non-carrier industry input to the carrier team goal of identifying a market development framework for cameraphone code scan products and services. Fifteen vendors responded to the RFI, providing the team with a broad array of respondents to survey. The team is currently working with a short list of respondents that will assist the team in the construction of the market development framework.
At this time, the team has identified a number of discussion categories that it would like to address in the market development framework, including, among other issue areas:
–The extent and specific elements of carrier coordination.
–The use of Proprietary or Standard Code.
–Customer information collection.
The team continues to consider what the outcome of its efforts might be, whether a RFP, an industry whitepaper, or some other forms of communications of the wireless industry’s jointly reached conclusions and approaches. It is anticipated that the initial phase of the initiative will be concluded by June 30, 2008, though the actual output – whitepaper, etc. – probably won’t be completed until the fall face-to-face meeting of the team at CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2008 show in San Francisco.
ENHANCED MESSAGING ACTION TEAM
The Enhanced Messaging Action Team is addressing the business and technical issues surrounding the extension of the guidelines for inter-carrier sharing of additional messaging attributes, specifically group messaging.
Overview and status update:
Since April 2007, the Enhanced Messaging team has been looking at the business and technical requirements for expanding the existing inter-carrier messaging agreement to include the sharing of additional attributes. After conducting a rigorous technical review, and retaining a consultant to do a consumer survey of the value of such enhancements to the current messaging application, the team decided to focus solely on inter-carrier messaging requirements surrounding the exchange of group messaging attributes.
Since mid-December 2007, the team has been focused on finalizing the business use cases for development of an expansion of the SMS platform to include group messaging attributes, and on the technical inter-carrier messaging requirements to implement service. The team will meet during the face-to-face WIC meetings at CTIA Wireless 2008 to report on its status to the WIC community and to the WIC Leadership Council. It is currently estimated that it will be at least until the face-to-face WIC meetings in the fall before the business and technical inter-carrier messaging requirements for the enhanced service are finalized.
During its face-to-face meeting at CTIA Wireless 2008, the team will be seeking input from non-carrier WIC participating companies, and looks to get input into the development of the product from online messaging companies going forward.
LOCATION-BASED SERVICES ACTION TEAM
The goal of the Location-Based Services Action Team is to develop a set of “Best Practices and Guidelines” for consumer privacy for LBS applications developers that can be referenced and used broadly in the industry. The guidelines will provide operators, LBS service providers, content providers, aggregators and other interested parties with a set of standards that will protect subscriber privacy and enhance security equally across the industry ecosystem.
Overview and status update:
Completed and ready for approval by CTIA’s Board of Directors at its meeting on April 1, 2008. The team has been meeting regularly since January 2007, and the final product has been vetted widely with industry participants and regulators. It is hoped these guidelines will provide LBS applications developers and service providers with a uniform set of requirements regarding the consumer privacy and that they will allow applications providers that meet these best practices thresholds to find it easier to get their LBS applications approved by carriers, thereby accelerating time to market. Copies of the draft will be available at the WIC AT meetings.
MOBILE CONTENT ACTION TEAM
The Mobile Content Action Team’s focus is implementation of the U.S. wireless carriers’ commitment to develop voluntary content classification standards and access controls for carrier content, as well as content access controls for Internet-based content. The team is working to ensure that mobile content is rated by the traditional ratings agencies and to provide content access restriction tools similar to those available to consumers of content distributed through traditional channels.
Overview and status update:
Currently, the Mobile Content Action Team is working to ensure that, by year end, all mobile games are rated by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board prior to being posted to carrier decks. Since, mid-January 2008, the carrier representatives to the Mobile Content Action Team have been working independently and with representatives from the ESRB to understand the implications of the initiative, for themselves and for mobile games publishers, in terms of costs, marketing requirements and affects on time-to-market. After a thorough review, the team has unanimously decided to go forward with the requirement, which individual carriers intend to institute before calendar year end. However, in order to understand how the industry might ameliorate the effects of the change on mobile game publishers’ businesses, the carrier representatives will begin face-to-face meetings with representatives from mobile games publishers during the WIC meetings at Wireless 2008.
The Mobile Content Action Team carrier representatives will review for the mobile games publishers the commitment the carriers made to utilizing existing ratings services in the adoption of the Content Classifications Guidelines and the rationale for moving forward with instituting the ESRB process for mobile games at this time. The team wants to understand more fully how the change will affect the mobile games publishers’ business and to work with the mobile games representatives to identify a timeline for the submission of mobile games to ESRB that will be the least disruptive possible, while still meeting its goal of instituting the change by no later than calendar year end 2008.
MOBILE FINANCIAL SERVICES & MCOMMERCE ACTION TEAM
The Mobile Financial Services & mCommerce Action Team’s mission is to create a foundation for common functionality for mobile payments, and to address consumer and merchant needs for simple, secure, and interoperable mobile payment choices. It is probable that this team would communicate guidance on technology standards that are available in the marketplace.
Overview and status update:
Currently, the team’s focus is the development of a set of Consumer Safeguards regarding fraud, identity, privacy and security for mobile financial services in the form of guidelines and best practices for mobile financial applications and mobile wallet services developers that could be used across multiple mobile channels, including SMS, WAP and mobile downloadable applications. The first phase of the initiative will be the compilation of existing best practices for non-mobile online financial services. The subsequent development of best practices for mobile financial services developers is expected to require four to eight weeks.
OFF PORTAL CONTENT MONITORING ACTION TEAM
The purpose of the Off Portal Content Monitoring Action Team is to provide wireless operators with an ongoing, rigorous assessment of the compliance of third-party content providers (aggregators and applications developers) with Industry Best Practices for SMS-based subscription services offered via Common Short Codes.
Overview and status update:
Since late 2006, CTIA has been providing carriers with a service, through a third party vendor, that monitors the compliance with Industry Best Practices of off carrier portal SMS-based subscription content offered via Common Short Code. Since rolling out the service, CTIA has worked with its carrier clients and its vendor to revise and improve the quality of both the testing of applications and the reporting process. During the last several months, especially, CTIA has been focused on automating the system and providing carriers, and potentially aggregators and content providers, with real time information on the status of offerings in the marketplace. At its upcoming WIC meeting the Off Portal Content Monitoring Action Team will roll out the specifications of the new system, which will become operational over the next 60 days.
In addition to these teams, CTIA has been asked to launch a new WIC initiative around application and converged cross-carrier messaging. The purpose of the initiative is two-fold, and the two aspects are separate and distinct:
A. The first initiative is to define guidelines that would facilitate the flow of messaging traffic, both SMS and MMS, between landline and wireless operators.
B. The second initiative is to assess the feasibility of amending the existing inter-carrier messaging guidelines from the current limitation of “mobile-to-mobile-only” messaging to allow also applications that meet a set of criteria satisfying the requirements that such applications do not violate customer policies set by another wireless operator, its customer privacy and do not negatively impact another carrier’s network performance. By designing applications that adhere to these new definitions, wireless operators would then be granted permission from other wireless operators to use these applications that are capable of sending messages to other wireless operators’ networks. Key concerns include SPAM, emergency notifications, and any other high-volume messaging that would generally affect another carrier’s network performance. If, as a result of the assessment, the team agrees to the feasibility of developing guidelines to allow application to peer inter-carrier traffic, the team will develop such guidelines.
Once approved by CTIA’s Board of Directors at its April 1st meeting, the first phase of each initiative is expected to take 90 days to complete.
The WIC Action Team meetings are open to all, and we encourage representatives from CTIA and non-CTIA companies who have an interest in these areas to attend and provide input.
You may contact Mark directly at [email protected]. You may contact RCR Wireless News at [email protected].