Group pins down mobile ecommerce standards

A global initiative to standardise security for mobile ecommerce - otherwise known as m-commerce - has been launched by EDS, Ericsson, Gemplus and the SmartTrust arm of Finnish telco, Sonera.

Dubbed Radicchio, the initiative will use Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to provide a secure environment for transactions.

Mobile operators, systems integrators, hardware vendors, financial institutions and others are all expected to join Radicchio, although no membership targets have been disclosed.

Joe Krull, Sonera VP of security, said: "We've all coming from different proprietary systems, and we've been chasing our tails. Now, with one voice, we hope to get the PKI approach right. PKI is a very clean approach for security."

The group denies Radicchio is a slap in the face for the WAP (wireless application protocol) Forum, or other existing forums, such as Bluetooth, which is advancing wireless connectivity for mobile devices.

"There are too many other issues to be resolved in the WAP Forum [which don't relate to security]," Sonera's Krull added.

Jonathan Tikochinsky, manager of the ecommerce practice at Datamonitor, said: "Although there's a very long list of other PKI initiatives out there, this does stand a chance because they're strong players.

"The interesting thing is the involvement of EDS, because otherwise we're looking at the usual suspects," he added, referring to telcos and smartcard companies.

Many analyst houses are now predicting more ecommerce will eventually be done over mobile devices than desktop PCs, and the Radicchio grouping quotes figures showing Web-enabled mobile phones will outnumber televisions worldwide by 2004.

Chris Dadd, mobile commerce consultant at ecommerce/e-banking company Brokat, commented: "Security has always been a barrier to m-commerce, but this is the sort of consortium we'd possibly consider joining. PKI is the way to go, but it can only work on a large scale if people use standards."

The first Radicchio event will be held at London's Olympia conference centre on 13 and 14 January 2000.