Cingular Extends OTA Deal

The USA's Cingular Wireless and SmartTrust have agreed on a new three-year deal covering the upgrade of the operator's existing OTA and subscriber provisioning infrastructure. Under the agreement, Cingular will upgrade to the SmartTrust DP6 solution to manage the over-the-air (OTA) provisioning of GSM and GAIT subscribers across its service area. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal also covers the use of SmartTrust Card Station, a Point-of-Sale activation system which will be used by the operator's retail stores and sales agents. Card Station uses a secure Internet connection to communicate with the operator's OTA server, locally updating a new SIM card with the appropriate service settings. This approach removes the delay in subscription activation and reduces network errors.

Cingular, which runs one of North America's largest cellular networks, is in the process of overlaying its existing TDMA network with GSM, using an interoperability service called GAIT. Use of the SmartTrust solutions is part of a drive to increase service availability and accessibility to subscribers.

"Cingular's vision is to simplify the wireless experience for both its consumer and business customers. It is mission critical for any operator to be able to effectively deploy and manage new applications and services as they are launched. SmartTrust helps Cingular accelerate delivery of easy-to-use personalized services to each customer segment," explains Paul Cuss, CEO of SmartTrust.

"We are delighted with continuing our successful relationship with Cingular," says Cuss. "Starting off in 1998, with a small system in the GSM network, we've now grown to become a national platform for Cingular, managing all initial service activation and International Roaming Data Base (IRDB) subscriber traffic for Cingular's GSM and GAIT customers."

Posted to the site on 20th November 2003