Title: INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Looking at today’s world, the management of identities is becoming an increasingly important factor for the interaction of different parties, such as organisations or people. As outlined in deliverable “D3.1: Overview on IMS”, Identity Management Systems have evolved into several types and classes, which may help to distinguish their usage and their focus. 

While identity management systems for the Internet are debated intensively, identity management in mobile applications has grown silently over the last 15 years (Rannenberg, K., 2004). Still – and to many surprisingly – the Global System for Mobile Communication ) is one of the largest identity management systems with more then 1.65 billion subscriptions, with the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) infrastructure being the basis for many application oriented initiatives to manage identities. This SIM infrastructure was introduced with mobile communication networks, mainly GSM, and for the end of 2005 the GSM association reported 1709.2 million subscribers with GSM being the fastest growing communications technology of all time. The number of countries with a GSM system is reported as more than 200 (GSM 2006), which exceeds the number of UN member states (191 in May 2006 (UN 2006)) and also that of countries where the ‘McDonalds’ fast food chain is represented (119 in May 2006, McDonalds 2006).

Even without special technology support quite a few people use a variety of GSM mobile communication accounts (and the corresponding SIMs and telephone numbers) to manage different identities for e.g. private and business purposes. Moreover, the almost global dominance of the GSM standard for mobile communications and the high penetration rates that GSM systems reached in many markets have inspired quite a few initiatives to piggy-back on the GSM system and especially the SIM as platforms for identity management and related applications.

• Identity management can be integrated into the SIM-Hardware.

• Identity management can use GSM subscriber information as issued with the SIM.

• Identity management can use GSM subscriber information stored in the GSM network.

The first two approaches aim at supporting the ID management that already exists in applications by using the GSM infrastructure. The third approach expands the GSM ID and user management itself and allows e.g. new revenue models in mobile communications. All three approaches are described in (Rannenberg, 2004) and may be extended in Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks.

It is interesting to analyse the reasons for the quietness of the growth of GSM subscriptions and mobile IDs. The main reason is obviously that the telecommunications business of the 1990s was mainly national, and within the respective country it was spread among usually not more than 2 to 10 players. Both market characteristics do not encourage international media coverage or sensational story-writing as e.g. the approach of a multinational company (Microsoft) to establish a internet-wide identity management and call it “[MS] Passport]”. Another reason is that the view of mobile telephones as computers and consequently as Internet terminals is spreading only very slowly, and SIMs were not seen as the main asset of mobile telephone but more as a helper technology..

However the mobile Internet and the “classic” (fixed line) one are integrating ever faster now, and the mobile networks are becoming enhanced Internet networks. At least three factors are enabling this.

1. In the aim of offering seamless services regardless whether customers are at home or on the road Telecoms and their mobile partners or subsidiaries are collaborating closer than ever. 

2. Also different sets of attributes (partial identities) are needed in different situations – and they can be made available due to the relative strength of the SIM card as a security token.

3. In more and more cases the context of a person and their situation are important for mobile communications, e.g. for filtering incoming communication. 

Most of the trends outlined here are not just a result of the development of mobile communication technology, but of the role that the services play in society and business life and of their economical, socio-cultural and governmental consequences.