Telespree and VeriSign deliver Self-Service
Activation
by Tim McElligott
TelephonyOnline.com, Mar 22 2004
ATLANTA--What began as an idea for disposable phones found
its way into the U.S. wireless market this week as a client/server solution
for device self-activation from Telespree Communications and VeriSign.
The companies announced this week that MetroPCS will use the Self-Service
Set-Up service they jointly developed.
Self-Service Set-Up is a suite of automated activation, account management
and self-care applications that guide consumers through an interactive
process that manages wireless device activation or reactivation, customer
account set-up, ongoing account maintenance, rate plan changes and promotions
using only the mobile device itself without the aid of a sales clerk
or call center.
Telespree, which began its life developing disposable phones, used software
developed for those phones to create a platform that operators can use
to automate the activation process for new phones and services. The
platform consists of server elements that reside in VeriSign’s
network, or the carrier's, and the Secure Instant Wireless Access (SIWA)
micro-client that resides as a SIM toolkit application on the wireless
device.
“It may have been developed for disposable phones, but the feedback
from [operators] was that the platform was more valuable this way,”
said Bill deKay, CEO of Telespree. “So we developed a patented
methodology for both CDMA and GSM operators.”
VeriSign will host the application as a network-based, self-service
solution The new self-care applications include Plan Changes, Feature
Changes, Add-A-Phone, Telephone Number Changes, and Handset and Warranty
Swaps.
Last month, Telespree teamed with Axalto, formerly Schlumberger Smart
Cards & Terminals, to integrate its self-service wireless automation
software onto Axalto's Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM)
Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards. Axalto will add Telespree's
Self-Service Set-Up applet to its Customer SIM Card Library, making
the software part of Axalto's standard portfolio of products and services,
making it available for all GSM devices. “
It’s a very thin client that operates at lower than the application
layer so it allows us to perform secure transactions and communicate
between the device and our server,” deKay said. “We built
our client into an Axalto toolkit so we could deploy it in all GSM devices.”
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