Carriers increase companies' control over handhelds

By Stephen Lawson
Network World Fusion, 01/10/05

Some mobile operators already have some offerings in place to deal with the conflict over enterprise-class mobile phones.

Verizon Wireless offers software tools that let a company configure its phones to accept only certain applications, says James Straight, vice president of wireless data products and business development. Verizon can produce two different monthly bills for one phone, one for corporate use and the other for consumer use.

Vodafone Group, which has extensive operations in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, takes a less-detailed approach. If a company doesn't want its employees to use the Vodafone Live consumer multimedia service, Vodafone can lock the phone out of that service, says Peters Suh, a director of corporate strategy. The carrier also offers a managed service that tracks phone use and reports to the company any use for non-work purposes, he says.

Nextel Communications has geared up for dual use in several ways, says Senior Vice President Greg Santoro. Any Nextel phone can support two lines, so employees can set up a personal line and receive a separate bill that the employer never sees, he says. If they have just one line, they can set up an electronic wallet backed by a personal credit card.

To control what employees put on the phone, Nextel can set up a special download library of company-approved items. Currently that library can accommodate only applications, but Nextel soon will enhance it to offer music, graphics and other items, Santoro says.

At CTIA, Sprint, which agreed last month to merge with Nextel, introduced a managed service for companies that want to centralize control of their phones.

Under the managed service, Sprint can monitor the use and security of a particular employee's phone and determine what applications and content are on it, says Scott Boehmer, general manager of customer solutions. The carrier even can delete unwanted items. If a particular file or virus seems to be causing a problem, Sprint can search and delete it. Sprint is working on being able to find viruses proactively and remove them, Boehmer says. If a device is lost or stolen, Sprint can remotely delete everything on it.

Sprint's service is provided, in part, with Intellisync's Mobility Suite software. Sybase's iAnywhere Solutions unit also offers a product for managing remote devices, called XcelleNet Afaria Security Manager.

Afaria can remotely detect what applications are installed on a device and how much memory they take up, says Shari Freeman, a manager in iAnywhere's product management group. If the IT staff determines that a consumer application or content takes up too much memory or might be causing a conflict, Afaria can uninstall that item from the device, she says. Afaria also can encrypt the data on a device and wipe it out if the device is lost or stolen.

Lawson is a correspondent with the IDG News Service.

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