Telecommunication

This industry is the largest user of smart cards in the world today mainly because smart cards can provide individual users with more personalised communication capabilities.

Now...

Telecommunication networks enable all areas of communication like financial services, retailing, healthcare, transportation and entertainment.

With a smart card...

	As a stored value card
	With values prepaid by the cardholder when making calls on public phones or normal phones equipped with smart card readers.
	On GSM phones
	Called the Subscriber Identity Module(SIM) card, it supports nationwide and international roaming; the ability to have continuous service even when crossing state and national borders. It also stores the user's identity so that the user is not "confined" to use a particular phone only.
	For accessing entertainment services over telecommunication network.
	For mobile computing:
	The SIM card on mobile phones uses encryption for protection of sensitive data during connection to a modem of a portable computer.

Smart Benefits

	Convinience: Cashless payment for making calls.
	Re-useable: "Top-up" value through an ATM
	Can be part of a multi-applications card on other machines like tram farebox, vending machines, etc.

	Portability: Usage across different types of mobile phones
	Separate billings: for different types of network subscriptions plans
	Security: The encryption algorithm on SIM cards encrypt speeches and control information transfered

Home | Introduction | Development | Applications | Security | Q & A