Wireless Future -> Issues and Threats

1. Wireless Spam

Evan Cramer (2002), states that US cellular networks currently lack the capacity for widespread distribution of unsolicited wireless advertising (wireless spam), these advertisements are already well known in Japan and Europe, where they have proven to be a significant burden on cellular users. 

Brandon Mitchener ( 2001), in his research about Japan’s wireless 

advertising market says that two years ago, cell phone advertising was hailed as the advent of a new and burgeoning market made available only through the advancement of technology. Japan’s largest cellular provider, NTT DoCoMo (“DoCoMo”), believed it would lead the world in ushering in a new age of commerce.  Wireless advertisements, in the form of emails delivered to cellular phones, would offer consumers time and location-relevant information. These unsolicited advertisements are generally unwanted and commonly referred to as “spam.”

The Japanese government and the Japan telecom network operator NTT DoCoMo has spent millions to research on this issue and to regulate the industry with governing laws. But there are still lots of issues to be finalised in this regard.

2. Security

Security for mobile, wireless computing is a particularly difficult problem. Technologies, such as cell phones and digital pagers, have almost no security because of poorly designed communications protocols.

There are options for bolstering security. For instance, industry analysts recommend firewalls for mobile devices wherever practical and antivirus software developers have added extensions into their products to support the most common handheld devices. Even then, there are no fool-proof solutions.

According to Smiley, Ken and others (2001), the situation is made more complex because mobile workers tend to be less technically adept than tethered workers are. Therefore, security for their devices must be automatic and transparent in order to be effective.

3. Lack of Standards

In order to achieve interoperability, international consortia and standardization bodies such as the ISO (International Standard Organization), OMG (Object Management Group), W3C (WWW Consortium), IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), SS7 (Signalling System) and TINA (Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium) have released standards specification for open distributed system. These bodies shape the IT landscape and increasingly release mobile computing related specifications.

Andry Rakotonirainy (2003)  summarizes the interoperability efforts which are situated at three complementary levels.

(i)                  At the architecture level defining the notion of distributed objects and concepts to access and bind them. This also addresses scalability issues.

(ii)                At the application level where a set of standard APIs to access and provide services are defined.

(iii)               At the protocol or network level. This allows independent wireless networks and physical mobile devices to communicate with each other. It also addresses the characteristic specifications of hardware.