While estimates vary between analyst houses, associations and telcos, the number of M2M connected devices on the market could range from the hundreds of millions to the tens of billions over the next five years.  >>

According to security technologist Bruce Schneier: “Modern networks are more like cities, dynamic and complex entities with many different boundaries within them. The access, authorization, and trust relationships are even more complicated.”

Schneier was describing the IT network (in a foreword to Security in 2020) but he could have easily have been discussing the mobile network because, thanks to convergence and the developments in mobile broadband, they’re fast becoming one and the same.

Mobile service providers, vendors and end users are subject to similarly significant challenges (and opportunities). For example, how is the switched network to protect itself from the viruses in the IP world, now LTE is bringing true convergence? Can IP based services accessed on the mobile device, and tapping into the user’s identity, ever be truly secure? Also, how can consumers protect their data from advertisers and brands bent on gaining as deep an insight as possible into their psyche and buying behaviour? Indeed, do they want to?  >>

UICC Easy as ABC: The Next Step for Internet Services and Security

The network is one of the greatest catalysts for change in our increasingly always-on world. Whether that’s an enterprise network able to deliver video communications to the desktops of thousands of employees, or the mobile network able to deliver rich media to millions of on-the-move consumers.
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More than a decade after the mobile industry first declared ‘content is king’, rich media services are now making an entirely legitimate claim to the throne long held by voice and basic P2P services. There’s no doubt that voice delivers the lion’s share of service provider revenues. Indeed, the dominance of mobile’s first ‘killer application’ is far from under threat, but as switch revenues decline mobile broadband services are, for the first time, rising to fill the void.  >>

Read Ajit Jaokar on the Smart Card Web Server based SIM as a possible client for the Cloud from an operator perspective.  >>

The author is principal consultant at Green Giraffe, an independent telecoms consultancy offering research and advisory services into emerging markets with a special focus on commercial prepaid and payment strategies in Africa & the Middle East. Michèle has been chairing the Mobile Transactions stream and keynote sessions at the 2008 SIMposium conference in Berlin on 22-23 April 2008.  >>