M. H. Sherif ITU Mediacom 2004-
24 April 20011
Potential ITU Work Items in Electronic Commerce
Mostafa Hashem SherifAT&T*
(These are personal opinions and do not engage AT&T )
M. H. Sherif ITU Mediacom 2004-
24 April 20012
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 20013
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 20014
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 20015
Business to Business Electronic Commerce
(example: Automotive Network Exchange (ANX))
ATM Backbone
ANXO
TradingPartner
(TP)
Certification Authority for CSPs
Certified Service Provider (CSP)Certified Service Provider (CSP)
Certification Authority for TPs
TradingPartner
(TP)
Access Network
Access Network
ANX Overseer
M. H. Sherif ITU Mediacom 2004-
24 April 20016
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 20017
Infrastructure Provider (s)
Content Provider
Service Provider
End-user or Customer
Network Provider 1 Network Provider 2
Content Manager(Retailer, broker, etc..)
Analysis in Terms of the Emerging Model for Telecommunications
Services
M. H. Sherif ITU Mediacom 2004-
24 April 20018
Distributed Management in a Virtual Private Network
Network Provider 1
Network Provider 2
Network Provider 3
Performance dataarchiver 3
Performance dataarchiver 1
Performance data archiver 2
Performance data collector(Customer site 1)
Performance datacollector(Customer site 2)
Performance datacollector(Customer site 3)
(X.160, X.161, X.162) are for a network run by a single operator
M. H. Sherif ITU Mediacom 2004-
24 April 20019
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 200110
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 200111
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 200112
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 200113
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 200114
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 200115
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
application 1
application n
virtual machine
Integrated Circuit Card Operating System
Integrated Circuit Card
application 2
......
M. H. Sherif ITU Mediacom 2004-
24 April 200116
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 200117
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 200118
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 200119
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 200120
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 200121
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