Bell Atlantic Mobile has ventured into a collaborative effort with Phone.com Inc. and Motorola Inc. to use Wireless Application Protocol technology to enable over-the-air provisioning on Code Division Multiple Access phones.
The combined effort aims to extend the functionality of Phone.com’s UP.Link Server Suite technology, which BAM already has licensed, to allow for OTA provisioning to Motorola-made CDMA phones equipped with Phone.com’s UP.Browser version 3.1.
The primary goal behind the effort is to allow BAM to reprogram the internal roaming lists of phones from the network. All phones contain an internal algorithm that seeks out a certain carrier’s network when roaming. While carriers using Time Division Multiple Access and Global System for Mobile communications technologies have OTA capabilities to reprogram that algorithm, CDMA carriers lack a simple solution to do so.
The hassle involved with such an effort is a major obstacle keeping carriers without an OTA provisioning solution from negotiating better roaming deals. Should these carriers negotiate a better roaming deal with a carrier not on the preferred roaming list in the phone, the only way to switch a user to the new roaming provider would be for the user to bring in the phone for reprogramming.
BAM is interested in securing better roaming deals for its SingleRate nationwide one-rate plan. Promising one per-minute rate anywhere in the country is a good marketing plan, but poses problems when trapped into particularly harsh roaming agreements in some regions.
According to Lee Magnus, director of wireless data at BAM, the only OTA provisioning option for CDMA carriers is a switched-based approach, which is limited and expensive.
“There are ways of doing it now, but they’re not very elegant and not very cheap,” he said. “This is a more standards-based way of doing it.”
He said the WAP-based OTA provisioning architecture will allow other uses beyond roaming list changes. Essentially, Magnus said the long-term vision is to allow CDMA users a way to download software upgrades from the network, much like how Internet users download new software onto their computers. Phone users could download things like new ringer sounds, new software and diagnostic tools, he said.
“The WAP-based over-the-air provisioning system will allow us to expand our sales channels and provide a new level of customer care,” said Richard Lynch, executive vice president and chief technology officer of BAM. “It is our vision to provide our customers with instant activation, updated software, access to e-mail and the Internet plus e-care services in a manner that is completely automated and personalized for the customer.”
Because CDMA carriers are particularly limited in their OTA provisioning options, BAM said it intends to submit the results of the collaboration to the CDMA Development Group’s Over The Air Handset Management Subgroup for stage II standardization.
Ben Linder, vice president of marketing at Phone.com, said this effort will create a new function for the UP.Link technology, currently used to deliver Internet-based wireless data services using Wireless Markup Language. Version 3.1 of the UP.Browser is Phone.com’s pre-WAP microbrowser. BAM said it will upgrade to version 4.0, or the full WAP-compatible version, sometime next year.
