Potential ITU Work Items in Electronic
Commerce
Mostafa Hashem Sherif
AT&T*
(These are personal opinions and do not engage AT&T )
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
1
Overview
• Review of ITU Core Competencies
• Areas of Electronic Commerce to be discussed
– Business to Business
– Business to Consumer (4 applications)
– Person to Person
• Summary of Suggested ITU Work Items
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
2
Starting Position
• Electronic commerce covers dematerialized relations
among economic agents
• No single standards organization can resolve all the
problems facing electronic commerce
• ITU efforts build on and complement on-going work in
other standard organizations
• ITU successes have been in the area of
telecommunications infrastructure
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
3
ITU Core Competencies
• Interoperability of transmission and switching
equipment world-wide
• Simple terminal interface for technologically
unsophisticated users
• Operations, administration and settlement across
operators
• Quality of service and performance management
including accounting and billing
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
4
Business to Business Electronic
Commerce
(example: Automotive Network Exchange
(ANX))
Trading
Partner
(TP)
Trading
Partner
(TP)
Access Network
Access Network
Certified Service Provider (CSP)
Certified Service Provider (CSP)
ATM Bac kbone
Certification Authority for TPs
AN XO
Certification Authority for CSPs
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
ANX
Overseer
5
Problems Uncovered
• Incompatibility of certificates
• Encryption is costly for SME
• Distributed management of a VPN is difficult
– configuration management
– performance management
– fault management and trouble ticketing
• User cannot easily collect information on
performance
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
6
Analysis in Terms of the Emerging Model
for Telecommunications Services
Content Manager
(Retailer, broker, etc..)
End-user
or Customer
Content Provider
Service Provider
Network Provider 1
Network Provider 2
Infrastructure Provider (s)
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
7
Distributed Management in a Virtual
Private Network
Performance data
archiver 1
Performance data
archiver 2
Network
Provider 1
Network
Provider 2
Network
Provider 3
Performance data
collector
(Customer site 1)
(X.160, X.161, X.162) are for a
network run by a single operator
M. H. Sherif
Performance data
archiver 3
Performance data
collector
(Customer site 3)
Performance data
collector
(Customer site 2)
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
8
Extending the Information Boundaries
Across Administrative Domains
• Existing:
– Exchange of trouble tickets using X.790, X.791(EURESCOM
projects for private lines)
– Accounting Data Interchange Format (IETF/ETSI TIPHON)
• Needed:
– Networks using frame relay, ATM to transport IP traffic
– DWDM and optical networks
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
9
Some Issues for Business to Consumer
Electronic Commerce
• User interfaces and their ergonomics
• Ease and uniformity of transactions on a world-wide
•
•
•
•
•
(as for telephone calls)
Accuracy of microbilling and capability to verify and
contest the billing accuracy
Multiple channels to merchant sites (text, audio,
image, etc.)
Payment in the buyer's currency
Identification with biometrics
Use of telephone cards (ubiquity, accuracy)
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
10
Application 1: The Minitel Model and its
Reincarnations
• Network of users and merchants federated by the
•
•
•
•
•
operator or network provider (intermediary)
Each operator identifies and authenticates its
subscribers and federated merchants or content
providers
Operator may also collect the payment and payback
the suppliers after getting its commission
NTT DoCoMo with i-Mode for mobile networks
Telia for wireline operations
ISP's are also getting involved
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
11
Evaluation
• Advantages
– ease of identification and authentication
– useful for small amounts
– no need to introduce new means of payment
• Disadvantages
– proprietary protocols (merchants and buyers must have the
same operator)
– limited to a single currency
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
12
Possible ITU Work Items
for Application 1
• Ensure world-wide usage by removing currency
dependency
– use of "minutes on the network" as an exchange currency for
micropayments
– Latch on settlement agreement among telephone operators
– Each operator identifies and authenticates their subscribers
– this would be also a cost-effective solution (banks do not
have a network going to individual homes to offer an
economical solution)
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
13
Application 2: Pre-paid telephone cards
• Prepaid telephone card are widely used
• Many operators with non compatible cards
• Accuracy of accounting is questionable for small
operators
• This may be a hindrance to the use of the "minutes
on the network" as a universal microcurrency
• ITU work items may address some of the issues
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
14
ITU Work Items for Application 2
•
•
•
•
Multi-application cards can also
include telephone cards
payment
Two competing operating
systems
– Multos ( Mondex and
MasterCard)
– JavaSoft (Sun et Visa)
Which one is more suitable for
micropayment applications for
telephone and the Internet?
ITU Recommendations may be
needed
M. H. Sherif
applicationapplication
1
2
......
application
n
virtual machine
Integrated Circuit Card Operating System
Integrated Circuit Card
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
15
Application 3: Biometric Identification
• Acquired characteristics
– Handwritten signature (500-1000 octets)
– Voice print (1000-2000 octets): Bacob with technology from
Keyware Technologies (http://www.keywareusa.com)
– Keystroke dynamics
• Innate characteristics
– Photo image (100-800 octets)
– Fingerprint (500-1000 octets)
– Iris scan (256 octets)
– Retina (35 octets)
– Shape of the hand (9 octets)
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
16
Biometric Revenues*
• Total revenue:
– $58.4 K in 99/est. $110 K in 00
– $ 7K in 99 /est. $14K in 00 for financial applications
• Techniques
– digital finger prints 34%
– hand geometry 26%
– face recognition 15% (check cashing/gambling casinos)
– iris/retinal recognition 11%
– speaker recognition 11%
– signature recognition 3%
* excluding automatic systems for finger prints used by governments - Source International
Biometric Group
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
17
Possible ITU Work items for
Application 3
• Criteria for evaluation of vocal identification systems
(performance with call quality, resistance to attacks, etc.)
• Reference data for algorithm development
• Standard format for file storage, etc.
• Other players
– Association for Biometrics (http://www.afb.org.uk)
– IBIA (International Biometric Industry Association)
(http://www.ibia.org)
– Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationtechnik (BSI – Federal
Information Security Agency) (http://www.bsi.bund.de)
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
18
Application 4: Multimedia connection of a
User to a Call Center
• Voice and data interactions are simultaneously
needed:
– Complex transactions
– Verification of user's identity before payment approval
• PSTN will be used for voice calls for sometime
• Needed:
– a way to multiplex voice and data calls on the same
subscriber line (on xDSL)
– a method to account for possible ways for connecting the
PSTN to IP networks (see TIPHON project of ETSI)
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
19
Person-to-Person Payments
• Internet auctions revealed the need for a trusted third
party for one-line transactions among complete strangers
• Examples: PayPal.com , eMoneyMail
• Systems require subscription to open accounts
• Telephone companies are well positioned to extend the
service to
– multiple countries
– a more open network (e.g., multiple operators)
• ITU Recommendations are needed for architecture and
performance characterization
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
20
Summary of Suggested ITU Work Items
• Business to Business
– Exchange of performance and fault management information
across administrative domains
• Business to Consumer
– Universal method for micropayments latching to telephony
settlements
– Telephone cards: accuracy and interoperability
– Identification with speech
– Traffic Multiplexing
• Person to Person
– Focus on on-line auctions
M. H. Sherif
ITU Mediacom 2004- 24 April 2001
21