Posted by Arash on January 27, 2000 at 06:27:07:
In Reply to: Smart cards and cellular communications posted by Tore on November 25, 1998 at 06:37:13:
: The future for smartcards today is fantastic, people will have more and more smartcards in their pockets, and the wallet will swallow with huge amounts of plastic....
: Well, my view is that there is only a need for a few number of smart cards. There is now standards arriving, which can hold multiple applications on one smart card. The ideal solution then must be to include one smartcard in a "wireless wallet". The wireless wallet is an electronic gadget, with ability to communicate both with cellular networks, and local radio communication using bluetooth. The power of downloading applications into the smartcard should be left to the user, which then can decide which bank, which lojalty schemes,... to put on the card.
: Why then a card, why can't the user download information into the harddisk? Well, as GSM has shown, a smart card gives flexibility and security. By moving the card to a new electronic gadget/cellular phone, the personal data of the the customer moves into the new gadget. So all lojalty schemes, tickets, money,... will move together with the user.
: My view then is that we will see a lot of content on the internet, which the user can access using his smart card for personal information, money and security.
: Any comments?
There is actually one company that are providing the technology your're just talking about. They were used to be called AU-System Mobile but are now known as Across Wireless www.acrosswireless.com.
By utilising the fact that sim cards can have resident applications on the sim card which uses SMS for the transport and SimToolKit protocol, they have already released several products that doesent
need the WAP-phone. Instead the requirements are due to the Phase-2+ (SimToolKit) and the SimCard with its application. The application is actually a WAP browser which interpret the SMS's that are assembled and
interpreted on the display. THe actual WAP-concept is already running and working without the WAP-phones and with the most important issue as a backbone of the concept, the Sim card provides up to tripple DES security of all communication if necessary.
Arash