Cartes’07, SIMalliance, the global association made up of the world's leading SIM card manufacturers, today announces the publication of technical specifications Step1 for a backward compatible SIM-based solution ensuring easy portability of the multimedia phone book from a device to another.
The phone book is at the heart of the universe for mobile communications. Voice calls, text messages, instant messages, emails, etc. it all starts from and is managed by the phonebook.
For mobile operators, the phonebook has a significant impact on ARPU and is a mean to reinforce subscriber loyalty. It provides a powerful service enabler and operators should be able to rely on the SIM to exploit the phone book user interface and deliver additional services to their customers.
For the subscriber, the phone book represents the anchor of his/her social network. Subscribers would rather have all their contact information appear magically on all the devices they use (PDA, Laptops, PC) or in case of phone replacement than attempt to partly recover their phonebook through software and/or cables!
Also the introduction of new contact information such as multimedia content and new digital addresses in the handset phonebook brings even more complexity to phonebook portability.
The SIM card remains the best option to manage seamlessly transfers between devices. Users know what the SIM is and clearly identify it as the ideal means for moving personal information from one device to another. The operation is simple, obvious and known to everybody.
In its role of providing support, direction and solutions to operators for their SIM strategies, SIMalliance through its “Enhanced Phonebook” workgroup has been working on technical specifications for a backward compatible SIM-based solution ensuring easy portability of the multimedia phone book from a device to another. SIMalliance has developed a two-step approach based on standards availability:
Step 1 ensures the portability of the text or multimedia handset phonebook without user interaction thus guaranteeing high user acceptance. This solution enables the portability of additional user's personal data (such as task lists, calendars, emails, SMS, bookmarks, notes) and eases synchronization with PCs and PDAs. To facilitate early deployments SIMalliance has developed and published the Step-1 specification based on existing standards. The technological foundations are OMA DS 1.2 also known as SyncML, OMA SCWS 1.0, and 3GPP release 7 UICC standards. Both ISO and high-speed UICC interfaces are supported. The penetration rate of SyncML technology in handsets is high.
Step 2 will allow portability of groups information and support of additional multimedia content (e.g. ring tones, voice tags). With this solution operators will have the ability to configure the phonebook user interface to deploy new services and partly control the phonebook’s “look and feel”. The step-2 solution will also provide an internal Java API to enable SIM resident applications to deliver additional services by exploiting contacts information. SIMalliance Step-2 specification will be submitted to relevant standardization bodies. These standards, which are due for June 2008, will be used for step 2 deployments
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Note to editors:
About SIMalliance: Putting the SIM at the heart of the new mobile eco-system
Over the past five years SIMalliance has become one of the world’s foremost commentators in the mobile business. By operating outside the singular commercial interests of any individual SIM card player, the association has been able to pinpoint the mission critical services on the horizon and help steer their development to meet the practical needs of the mobile market.
With SIMalliance members* now responsible for nine in every ten SIM cards sold worldwide, the collective vision of the association is uniquely placed to shape SIM developments and the impact they will have on the new generation of mobile services. From their standpoint, the challenge couldn’t be clearer for the protagonists in the mobile eco-system.
* SIMalliance members are: Eastcompeace, Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, Incard, Oberthur Card Systems, Prism (A Net1 Company), Sagem Orga, SanDisk & XPonCard
Stéphanie de
SIMalliance – Marketing Director
+33 6 85 91 19 94
Stephanie.delabriolle[at]simalliance.org