CSC Helps Bring Mobile Platform to Europe

E-Plus, a German subsidiary of Dutch telecom giant KPN, based its mobile data services on i-mode, a popular mobile data platform created by Japanese wireless provider NTT DoCoMo. Bringing i-mode to Germany required a comprehensive systems engineering and architecture project.

The project, which began in spring 2001, was recently given CSC’s highest award, the Leading Edge Forum’s Award for Technical Excellence. For the 2003 awards, more than 70 nominations were made worldwide and six were selected as winners. The award for the E-Plus i-mode platform project went to members of CSC Germany’s BA eBusiness and BA Telecommunications groups, who led the project. (For more on the award, the award-winning team members and the Leading Edge Forum, see the end of this story.)

I-mode, launched in Japan by NTT DoCoMo in 1999, has over 36 million users. The i-mode technology is a packet-switched (always on) overlay over a traditional circuit-switched (you need to dial up) voice system. Users of i-mode phones can do such things as send e-mails and instant messages, check the weather forecast and sports results, play games, download cartoons and other images, do online banking and stock trading, search for restaurants and purchase airline and train tickets. Corporations are also increasingly turning to i-mode for internal applications, such as providing company database access to mobile sales teams. NTT DoCoMo, through licensing agreements with local operators, began exporting the i-mode concept to Europe and Asia in 2002.

The challenges

The CSC team faced many challenges in building the E-Plus i-mode platform. Due to technology and business differences between Germany and Japan, a new technology platform had to be designed and developed for the German market. Europe’s packet-switched technology is based on the GSM/GPRS standard, which is different from the Japanese standard, and i-mode had to be adapted for the European standard.

Content for the new service also added complexity to the project. In the traditional “walled garden” model used with wireless data services, consumers have access only to content owned by their mobile operator. That means operators have to buy content for customers, limiting the number and type of services. The newly developed i-mode platform of E-Plus serves as a content broker, linking third-party content providers to mobile users.

Content providers in the E-Plus model could be entertainment, news or other businesses that own or sell content or transactional services. The features and functionality of the E-Plus i-mode platform make it possible for a content provider to offer and sell services easily and at a low cost. Because the platform serves as a content broker rather than a closed Web portal, CSC had to set up new processes in the area of content partner integration. Additionally, tools to support these processes had to be implemented.

The E-Plus i-mode service platform was designed and built by CSC and went live in March 2002. Features include security and access, user management, provisioning, billing and fee collection, repudiation management, directory services and third-party service management. Since the E-Plus i-mode platform was the first of its kind in Europe, the processes had to be defined and implemented completely from nothing or adopted from E-Plus’s existing processes.

Because the platform was built with standard Internet technology, the content providers can provide mobile services like billing and location-based services, inexpensively, without having to use proprietary APIs (application programming interfaces) or plug-ins. Content providers can adapt existing Web services by using ihtml (a mobile version of HTML) enhancements and sizing the presentations in terms of both display and memory, which are smaller on mobile devices. Other standard Internet technologies like cookies can still be used, however.

Off to a good start

Since its debut, the platform has had no major problems or outages. There are more than 130 content partners and 180 premium services connected to the platform. The top content provider earned more than 300,000 euros in the first 10 months and there are currently about 150,000 subscribers. KPN has publicly stated it is shooting for 1 million subscribers by the end of 2003. E-Plus currently has 7.5 million subscribers to its mobile phone service.

E-Plus’s i-mode system can handle more growth. The system architecture provides support for multiple network operators and service providers, is suitable for all types of devices and can be used directly with the UMTS (Europe’s implementation of 3G, or third-generation, wireless phone system) network. It can handle up to 20 million users and can perform up to 500 complete transactions per million users.

Since E-plus’s launch of the first release of i-mode, more functions have been added. Today i-mode supports premium content using event-based billing. Five handsets from four manufacturers are now supported, including those produced by NEC, Toshiba, Siemens and Nokia.

Moving forward

The CSC team members who worked on the E-Plus project have since been transferred to various other telecommunications companies to bring mobile data services to the market. New projects for ByTel in France, Orange in Switzerland and Orange worldwide have been undertaken. And E-Plus has started several follow-up projects. CSC now has a multi-million dollar application maintenance contract for i-mode, and more change request projects to enhance the i-mode platform with new and improved features and functions are expected. There are three organized release teams concurrently developing further functional enhancements.

CSC’s experience on the E-Plus i-mode project has resulted in a consulting product, which has been dubbed “mobile multi media platform,” or m3p. The m3p product is a collection of development skills, business ideas and hardware and software tools that can be used for similar mobile data projects. The features of the system can also be used outside of the telecom industry for such things as third-party billing or brokerage platforms that provide charged services over the fixed or mobile Internet.

The award-winning team

The CSC E-Plus i-mode awarding-winning project team members included Holger Baten, content provider architect, BA Telecommunications; Alexander Herzlinger, leading architect, BA eBusiness; Andreas Kattus, project- and change-management, BA Telecommunications; and Erhard Philippe, business architect, BA Telecommunications.

About the Leading Edge Forum

The Leading Edge Forum (LEF) serves as "The Technology Voice of CSC” by providing thought leadership and a technology point of view for both the marketplace and CSC. The LEF’s programs and initiatives include in-depth technology reports, the LEF Centers of Excellence, which are dedicated to providing world-class IT service, and the Award for Technical Excellence, which is the most prestigious recognition for technologists at CSC. Established in 1989, the award recognizes valuable contributions to CSC’s clients and its own technical knowledge base.

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Learn more about CSC Germany’s Financial Services and Telecommunications Offerings (in German).