Frédéric Vasnier, Senior Vice President of the Telecoms Business Unit at Gemalto, takes up his fifth term as Chair of the organisation, after an election among fellow SIMalliance Board members representing Giesecke & Devrient, Incard, STMicroelectronics, Morpho, Oberthur Technologies and VALID.
Herve Pierre, General Secretary of SIMalliance comments: “The Board welcomed the continuity of Fred’s strong leadership at a pivotal time in the growth of the global SE market. This corresponds with the subsequent evolution of SIMalliance from an organisation historically focused on promoting an open SIM ecosystem to one which aims to promote the usage of other SEs in mobile services. The rapid increase in applications and use cases for all types of SE, resulting from huge growth in areas such as secure mobile services, digital content and connected devices, can only be sustained through global implementation of a standardized SE infrastructure. Under Fred, and the wider Board’s leadership, SIMalliance will continue to support this goal by delivering public technical specifications, recommendations and white papers which will facilitate and accelerate the delivery of secure mobile applications globally.”
In 2013, SIMalliance has advanced the industry towards its goal of an open SE ecosystem by delivering the following outputs:
- The organisation’s Open Mobile API, which offers a standardised way of connecting mobile applications with all SEs on a device regardless of SE form factor, has been referenced by the GSMA and is currently implemented in more than 100 models of Android NFC smartphone.
- The UICC LTE Profile released in January, which outlines requirements for optimal support of LTE/EPS networks by the UICC, has already been widely used among mobile network operators in North America.
- The UICC Device Implementation Guidelines paper, which was launched in June, outlines fundamental and optional UICC features device vendors need to support to optimise UICC interoperability in future devices.
- The NFC Secure Element Stepping Stones paper, launched in July, arms NFC service providers, mobile network operators (MNOs) and related industry stakeholders with the interoperability-focused technical considerations, recommendations and specification extracts they need in order to simplify the development, deployment and support of NFC services across the prevailing SE form factors of UICC and embedded SE (eSE).
Frederic Vasnier, SIMalliance Chairman, concludes: “2014 will be a very important year for SIMalliance as the organisation continues to advance interoperability and co-operation across the global SE ecosystem. The organisation’s roadmap for the year ahead is currently being finalised, however near term priorities include projects on M2M and mobile internet security. We also seek to further our industry collaboration, to ensure that SIMalliance continues to address relevant market requirements and reflect the most advanced technical evolutions.”
List of SIMalliance Board members
- Frédéric Vasnier, Senior Vice President, Telecom Business Unit Gemalto (SIMalliance Chairman)
- Christian Lefebvre, Telecom Product Line Director, Oberthur Technologies
- Michael Meyer, Head of Innovation and Alliances, Giesecke & Devrient
- Yves Portalier, Senior Vice President – Telecoms Business Unit, Morpho
- Michele Scarlatella, Central Marketing Director, Incard Division, MMS Group, STMicroelectronics
- Alencar Nunes da Silva Junior, Telecom New Business, Products and Solutions Superintendent, VALID
