Mobile Connect Summit London 2017

27 Apr Mobile Connect Summit London 2017

“The time is now, let’s act together!” That was the theme and core messaging at the GSMA Mobile Connect Summit in London this week.

Encouraging operators to work together nationally, and assist service providers to deliver great user experience came up during most sessions. Different countries are focusing on different aspects of Mobile Connect, UK for example is purely looking at attribute verification and has yet to consider authentication implementation.

Mobile Connect Examples

MTS and SK Telecom presented compelling, high value in production examples, SK (South Korea) has achieved 27K application integrations, and although running a proprietary system nationally, is looking to Mobile Connect for global integration.

Andrew Tobin MD at Evernym provided a great introduction to a workable blockchain based identity platform, Sovrin. Sovrin provides for the ability to revoke claims previously made and decentralises claims leaving end users in control of their data sets. Sovrin is not an Identity Provider, it is an identity network allowing users to store and share identity claims. See www.sovrin.org for more details.

Adoption and the User Experience

Once again, a growing depth of statistics are showing that Mobile Connect does improve user adoption, retention and usage rates. Focused site design, true multichannel support and thorough A/B testing are critical to shaping the experience and helping the end users get the most from Mobile Connect. In one case simply making Mobile Connect the default authentication option lead to an 8 fold increase in usage. This highlights the need for the operators to bring full service propositions to the service providers, not just a billable technology interface.

The panel session on User Perspectives, including Ubisecure was well received. Operators need to recognise that a blended authentication approach will be required by service providers, not just Mobile Connect. The resounding call to action was ‘act now’, operators have a limited window of opportunity before OTT providers bring in strong authentication, and we are still seeing limited deployment and global availability.

Regulatory impact and Mobile Connect applicability was covered in detail, with guest speaker James Thomson from Cullen International covering the legal implication and dedicated sessions for PSD2 and eIDAS. There are many implications as we know, and the timelines are aggressive. Mobile Connect provides some aspects of the solution, but coupled with the current lack of ubiquity means that blended or brokered solutions will be needed.

Mobile Connect still has tremendous potential, but the window of opportunity to act is reducing. If you are a mobile network operator or service provider, contact Ubisecure or request a demo now to hear how we can deploy or integrate to Mobile Connect for you in mere weeks. Ubisecure Identity Platfom also supports over 20 other authentication methods out of the box, enabling the mobile network operator to become a true Identity Provider for online services.

If you want to know more about Mobile Connect, download this whitepaper, or see how Ubisecure has helped the Canadian operators deploy Mobile Connect.

Simon Wood is group CEO for b10v portfolio company Ubisecure.