SCP Activity Report 2004

Responsible for the development and maintenance of a common Integrated Circuit (IC) Card platform for all mobile telecommunication systems, for the application independent specifications for the interface with terminal equipment and for IC Card standards for general telecommunications, m-commerce and high security applications.

The main task for ETSI Project Smart Card Platform is to maintain and expand the smart card platform specifications for 2G and 3G mobile communication systems on which other organisations can base their system specific applications. In particular, this allows users access to global roaming by means of their smart card, irrespective of the radio access technology used. EP SCP also has an important part to play in the growth of mobile commerce, by developing the standards for IC cards to secure financial transactions over mobile communications systems, and, in addition, is also the custodian for the m-commerce specifications and reports developed by the former ETSI Project M-COMM. The specifications of EP SCP are generic in the sense that they provide a true multi-application platform not just for mobile communication systems but for all applications using a smart card.

Major achievements in 2004 in the evolution of the smart card platform were the completion of Release 6 of all specifications and the approval of a new Technical Specification on Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) support in the Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC). This specifies the use of a smart card as a secure access device to a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) and makes the execution of certain security processes in the PC obsolete. EP SCP develops its specifications according to so-called Releases which reflect the development cycle of its major customers. One of the highlights of the new functionality introduced into Release 6 is the specification of large files which allows, for instance, the storage of Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) files employed by 3G systems on the card. The amount of data stored is now limited only by the memory available on the card while previously it had been limited to about 65k bytes. At the same time a higher interface speed was introduced to cater for such large quantities of data.

EP SCP derives its requirements from requests coming from both within the committee and outside ETSI. Major outside contributors include, in particular, GlobalPlatform, the GSM Association and the Third Generation Partnership Projects (3GPP™ and 3GPP2). To handle all the various requests in a more market-related and future-oriented manner, EP SCP has set up a new Working Group, ’Requirements‘ (EP SCP REQ), which will meet just prior to each Plenary meeting , feeding in its analysis and documents for final discussion and decision. This new structure will also allow the new Technical Working Group (EP SCP TEC), which was formed out of the merger of the three existing Working Groups, to remain focussed on the technical aspects of its work.

The successful collaboration between EP SCP and GlobalPlatform on technical issues resulted in the full alignment of the latest versions of their respective smart card specifications – ETSI’s UICC Technical Specifications and the GlobalPlatform Card (2.1.1) Specification. The result of combining ETSI’s smart card solution with GlobalPlatform’s multi-application infrastructure is that there will now be one end-to-end solution for secure, flexible and remote smart card application life cycle and file management.