The secure wireless industry initiative MeT, sponsored by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Siemens and Sony, has publicly released its first set of mobile e-commerce specifications. In addition, a document on ticketing and other usage scenarios, including account-based payments, has been presented by the one-year old consortium.
Martti Granberg, chairman of MeT, is calling for industry-wide feedback and comment on the specs, which also include definitions of terms and tools, security requirements, and user experience.
"With these specifications we are complementing the work of other industry standardisation bodies and preparing the market for trusted mobile e-commerce services globally," he says.
The MeT Associate members, including security vendors, systems integrators, and mobile network operators, first reviewed the specs in in early February. Granberg says the impact of the release will be seen in mobile phone products and other solutions launched by MeT sponsors and members during this year.
MeT technologies and concepts are designed to work on all networks, with all services, and from all mobile devices. They will draw on existing industry standards such as wireless application protocol (WAP), wireless transport layer security (WTLS), wireless identification module (WIM), public key infrastructure (PKI), and Bluetooth, says Granberg. Privacy and security is ensured through the use of digital signatures and cryptography services for transaction verification, confidentiality, authentication, and non-repudiation.
Examples of MeT based applications include secure access for financial and corporate services and use of mobile payment mechanisms such as credit cards, debit cards, loyalty schemes, and ticketing.