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WASHINGTON DC -- July 16, 2003 -- WLAN Smart Card Consortium releases comprehensive smart card specification to allow hot spot operators to extend SIM technology for WLAN authentication. Building on GSM experience allows mobile operators to utilize existing roaming, billing, and back office infrastructure.
This specification presents a smart card interface that provides interoperability between smart card and device manufacturers and includes industry standard EAP-based security technologies to allow mobile operators to reuse existing deployments while providing a richer user experience. It is the first step towards defining industry specifications for complete WLAN smart card solutions for all market segments, including enterprise, public, and home networks.
Strong smart card based authentication provides enterprise class WLAN security giving confidence to corporate users in public hot spot environments. This specification utilizes industry-endorsed standards for authentication - 802.1x and EAP. A smart card based architecture paves the way for the WLAN user experience to be as seamless as GSM. This is facilitated by the same SIM technology that is in your phone today coupled with auto-configuration extensions that hide the complexity of WLAN connections, a common headache for users today.
The purpose of this specification is interoperability between smart card providers. This is a key element for operators to provide roaming between hot spot providers. “Because the specification is SIM-based it allows operators to apply an accepted authentication model to a new market”, says Bertrand du Castel, pro-tempore President of WLAN Smart Card Consortium.
The draft specification WLAN-SIM V0.1 is available for comments at http://WLANSmartCard.org. The next WLAN Smart Card Consortium meeting is September 23-25 in Paris, France.
About WLAN Smart Card Consortium
The mission of the WLAN Smart Card Consortium is to define and promote smart card related specifications for WLAN across all market segments, including enterprise, public WLAN and home networks. Members include: ActivCard, Alcatel, Aspects Software Ltd, Atmel, BlueWave IP, Dai Nippon Printing, ENST, Gemplus, Giesecke & Devrient, Infineon Technologies AG, Jurgensen & Corcoran Consulting, Koolspan, Oberthur Card Systems, Raak Technologies, Schlumberger, SCM Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Transat Technologies, Trusted Logic, Ucopia, VeriSign, and Visa.
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