NEW YORK-Telecom Italia Mobile, Europe’s largest wireless carrier, sees the Subscriber Identity Module that links each customer to its network as key to its control over an expanding array of wireless and wireline services.
SIMs, also known as smart cards, are getting even more intelligent, and this rapid evolution opens up many avenues for TIM, Mauro Sentinelli, general director, said during a recent presentation and interview here.
“All authentication goes through the SIM network first. We own the customers because we control the SIM card,” he said.
“The SIM is most important in our [Global System for Mobile communications] system because it is a portable, personalized processor, a [personal computer] without display and keyboard. It is proactive. It can start or propose actions.”
This spring, TIM plans to introduce dual-slot mobile handsets, which contain one SIM card for wireless telecommunications and another for electronic commerce. The second SIM card, with a processing capacity of 16 kilobytes per second, will encrypt data through its digital signature functionality.
The SIM Toolkit 16K comprises these primary applications: management and automatic recharge of prepaid wireless services; interactive management of personal bank accounts; electronic mail functions; access to horoscopes, soccer scores, news and national and international stock exchange information.
“This is a transition to a single SIM card. By year-end, we won’t need two because of the increases in processing capacity (to 32 kbps),” Sentinelli said.
At present, the limitations of smart cards would have forced the carrier into a compromising position. To make room for the e-commerce functions on its own SIM card, TIM would have had to remove other wireless telecommunications services from it. As SIM cards improve, their role will become more ubiquitous and important.
“All information can be embedded into the SIM card-credit and debit cards, drivers license numbers, health care information, marriage licenses,” Sentinelli said.
“The mode of access does not matter because you can use the same SIM card for your personal computer, wireline phone, Web phone, television. The last mile is radio, but all the rest is fixed line.”
Bluetooth, a standard for interoperability among devices, will allow wireless customers to extract information from their handsets’ SIM cards and transmit it to their PCs. But there is a lot more to it than that.
“In the works now, and we will unveil it in coming months, is using Bluetooth and the SIM to pay tolls and parking fees, for fleet management, for online health monitoring, to locate banks, to pay for sodas,” Sentinelli said.
Furthermore, the TIM executive said, the potential for SIM card use in a variety of data communications is not hindered by today’s second-generation wireless environment.
“The most important difference is not between 2G and 3G but between circuit-switched and packet-switched technologies,” he said.
During the second half of this year, TIM plans to make commercially available General Packet Radio Service. The carrier is on a parallel track to release its Wireless Application Protocol service by year-end.
TIM expects these developing capabilities to propel it increasingly into the sphere of electronic commerce. As a result, it will have to adapt and expand its role to meet the changing opportunities and demands.
“The other part of value-added services is that the phone operator will become a distribution center. Expanding VAS this way means we must upgrade our customer relationship management systems,” Sentinelli said.
This, in turn, will help TIM continually fine tune its offerings to suit the individual tastes, even of its prepaid customers, who constitute a substantial portion of its 19 million total subscribers.
“Our prepaid customers are not anonymous because we are obliged by the police to know their identity. Prepaid is just another way to pay for service,” Sentinelli said.
