Still Live from Symposium, I have listened this morning to a talk from Klaus Vedder, chairman of ETSI/SCP. Most of the speech was a classical speech from a standard person, highlighting the things enabled by their new developments. But on this talk, two statements sounded a bit different.
First, a slide showed the question “When are we going to make T=0 redundant?”. The idea would here be to allow handsets that support USB not to support T=0, in order to phase it out from the market. We then got more details. Of course, this would basicallly mean that, as phones migrate to USB, all SIM cards would need to be changed, which is an opportunity for card vendors, and a logistical problem for MNOs. On the other hand, this is right time to do this; if we do not start phasing out T=0 now, it will linger for many years.
This is interesting, but of course, MNOs need to be convinced that this is a good idea. Success remain unlikely, but it would greatly improve if the industry can prove that the MNOs could gain from using the technology. Then, the switch to USB would be an efficient way to guarantee that all users get recent SIM cards fairly rapidly.
The second interesting point by Klaus Vedder came as an answer to the question “What is your wish for next year?”. His answer was that he would like “standardization to become again what it was 10 years ago”. He then explained that 10 years ago, it was possible to actually negotiate between actors, whereas today, deadlocks often happen, like in the USB/MMC fight.
Well, I guess that this is a consequence of success. If I look at the Java Card Forum, the last few years have been very refreshing, because we have spent our time defining a “next-generation” platform, with little short-term impact. In this context, negotiation has always been around, and it remains the rule today. The situation was quite different when we were discussing the 2.x specifications (in particular between 2.1.1 and 2.2), because we were actually impacting current deployments, with immediate impact. Then, even the slightest specification clarification would lead to very tense debates, as such clarifications would always go in the direction of some vendors, and force others to modify their products. We always have been able to do resolve these issues, but it has not always been simple, and lawyers have been involved in at least one instance.
So, I wish the best for Klaus and SCP, but the stakes are so high around this spec that open collaboration is likely to remain a wish, until the stakeholders realize that deadlocks lead to delays and eventually hurt their very interests.
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