Integrated Card Technology (ICT) is one of South Africa`s leading suppliers of smart cards and smart card technology. Currently moving into Africa with the supply of SIM cards to the Celtel network operators - part of Mobile Systems International Cellular Investments (MSI-CI), ICT aims to take cellular communications to people who have yet to experience the convenience of this communication tool, and to expand the uses of the cellphone in the millennium.
MSI-Cellular has won GSM licences in Uganda, Egypt, Zambia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Gabon and Congo Brazzaville and would like to take cellular communications across the African continent, to supply a working telecommunications infrastructure to countries that have previously struggled with inadequate facilities. In South Africa, MSI Cellular, is the operator partner in the Khuluma 084 Consortium bidding for the 3rd cellular licence.
MSI obviously believes in the quality of ICT`s products and services, and as a result has commissioned ICT to supply SIM cards to the Celtel networks. Currently using German shareholder Giesecke & Devrient to supply the SIM cards, ICT will be manufactuing the cards themselves from early 2000.
"We already have the manufacturing capabilities and experience in application development, " explains Patricia Simeons, Product Manager at ICT. "As South African manufacturers, we will be more cost effective whilst still producing products compliant with world standards.
"With knowledge gained from G&D, which was the first company in the world to make SIM Toolkit mobile banking and the 32K SIM card commercially available, we are ready and able to take on the millennium and implement new and exciting cellphone technology both in South Africa and across our borders."
One of the areas in which ICT has been promoting smart card technology is the use of the SIM card for value added services such as banking, information services and internet access. The new 32K SIM launched by G&D has doubled the memory from 16KB to 32KB of EEPROM and with this memory increase, advanced value-added services such as mobile financial services, now become commercially viable.
"We are excited by the possibilities that the increase in SIM capacity will bring in terms of mobile banking and mobile commerce in general, particularly when considered in conjunction with new mobile technology such as SIM Application Toolkit (SAT) and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)," says Patricia. "When working with existing SIM`s we have been limited to memory capacity, however, now with G&D`s new 32KB cards, the door is open to more enhanced applications."
Share
