NEW YORK-“Right now we are on the cusp of major breakthroughs in the inter-operability of different applications on smart cards for [personal communications services],” Mark Ferdinands, product manager for G&D America, Reston, Va., said March 25.
Earlier in March, specifications went out for a vote that would establish a standards basis for smart card inter-operability “in a cellular/PCS environment” among the various technologies selected by wireless carriers, he said. Ferdinands is an editor of the specifications, which are being developed by T1P1.2, a standards setting organization based in Washington.
“Some carriers are trying to block it, but I think it will pass,” he said in a presentation at “Smart Cards in the United States ’97,” sponsored by IBC USA Conferences Inc., Southborough, Mass.
Many of the objections by American carriers, as he understands them, are chauvinistic, Ferdinands told RCR.
That is, they are related more than anything to the fact that smart cards for wireless telecommunications today are used by carriers deploying Global System for Mobile communications, a standard developed in Europe.
“The crux of the problem today is multiple standards, but this creates a lot of possibilities for smart cards to support all the technologies on a single card,” he said.
For personal communications carriers, smart cards-which move processing intelligence from the handset to the computer chip-are a key way to distinguish their services from cellular carriers.
The handset serves as a keyboard and display screen for the smart card inside it.
Ferdinands attributes much of the rapid decline in wireless handset prices in Europe to the deployment of smart cards.
“There are (cellular) carriers out their calling themselves PCS because the PCS name sounds good,” Ferdinands said. “In my personal opinion, I’d look for the smart card in the phone to make sure I’m getting PCS. The network is 100 percent digital, has enhanced security and voice privacy options. Having a smart card means I can use the phone anywhere in the world with one phone and get one bill.”
However, Ferdinands said he believes that wireless carriers deploying smart cards are compromising significantly their inherent security features by eliminating the personal identification number requirement for customer access.
“Wireless providers think people don’t want the hassle of PIN codes,” he said. “I disagree with the industry because that’s like banks issuing ATM cards that are usable without a PIN.”
Although the first patents for smart cards were awarded nearly 30 years ago in Germany, these computer chips embedded in plastic cards didn’t go into widespread use until the mid-1980s. At that time, in Germany, they were issued for prepaid, wireline pay phone calling.
As smart cards begin to make inroads in wireline pay phones in North America today, companies like Lucent Technologies Inc. also are developing the concept for use in cellular pay phones.
“The big companies like Lucent are getting into this because the carriers want to generate more traffic on their cellular networks,” Ferdinands said.
Another interesting development on the near-term horizon involves the evolution of smart cards from those run by memory chips to those run by microprocessors, he said.
Although more expensive, microprocessors will allow smart cards to conduct more complicated transactions, like doing personal banking by means of a PCS phone.
