OMTP announces final documents prior to transition into Wholesale Application Community (WAC)

London, UK, 24th June 2010: In advance of its transition into the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), the OMTP today announced its three final document releases.

During its final year, the OMTP community has continued to deliver groundbreaking recommendations and will conclude its deliveries with three updated documents including to one of its first documents produced back in 2005. The three new update documents are:

– Camera Maintenance – providing updated recommendations for camera quality on mobile devices including performance, focal distance, zoom multipliers and horizontal field of view.
– Visual Voicemail Maintenance – providing several protocol improvements and enhanced security
– Common Charger and Local Data Connectivity Maintenance – providing additional safety requirements and updates through industry feedback on moving to a Common Charging capability based on USB-IF specifications.

Tim Raby, MD OMTP commented, “Since its inception in 2004 the OMTP has risen to many challenges and by listening to the industry it has provided the mobile industry with many documents which have reduced fragmentation and improved the quality of the features and services on modern mobile devices. I am proud to have led OMTP for the last four years and made a real difference to the devices which are now on the market.” Tim is currently holding the position of interim CEO of WAC.

David Gannon, VP, Strategic industry relations at Deutsche Telekom and Chair of the OMTP Board of Directors confirmed that “OMTP has proven itself as an important and effective forum for operators and vendors to drive future terminal requirements to the ultimate benefit of users. For Deutsche Telekom, our customers and the whole mobile industry the OMTP and its deliverables have been of significant value. We are delighted to build on this success within the Wholesale Applications Community, which will bring a significantly larger supporting community, will drive the alignment of BONDI and JIL for consistent terminal implementations and setup a commercial ecosystem. In parallel, work will continue within GSMA and OMA to continue the alignment of terminal requirements beyond OMTP.”

Over the years, the OMTP and its membership comprising leading operators and vendors have provided the industry with numerous terminal recommendations that have simplified, secured and enhanced terminal implementations to the ultimate benefit of the users. Amongst others, OMTP has delivered the technical requirements for a common charger across devices; it has unified the Bluetooth implementations and has become renowned for its software and hardware security frameworks. However, OMTP’s flagship delivery has been BONDI, which, together with many of the OMTP assets will be transitioned and used as the basis of the WAC.

Since its launch and especially with the delivery of its BONDI initiative, the OMTP has grown considerably in strength and recognition. It is because of this record of success that the OMTP was chosen to become the legal entity behind WAC and for BONDI to form an important element of the WAC terminal implementation. BONDI’s initial 18 APIs and its security framework in combination with inputs from JIL will drive a common set of requirements to be pursued under WAC. Other aspects of BONDI such as its compliance model, reference implementation and architecture and security layers will be transitioned to WAC, providing the WAC project with solid foundations and a reliable, well established community of supporting operators and vendors.

Announced in February 2010 at the Mobile World Congress, WAC will establish a simple route to market for developers and provide access to the latest and widest range of innovative applications and services to as many customers as possible worldwide.

As part of the transition from OMTP to WAC, the company will not only change its name but will also pursue different targets with changes in governance, membership and deliverables.

Whilst BONDI will be continued under the WAC, OMTP’s classical terminal requirement activities will be pursued within the GSMA and OMA. Many of the OMTP members will continue to engage within these fora, driving alignment on terminal requirements and building on the work of OMTP.

About OMTP
OMTP is a forum funded by companies from across the mobile phone value chain, set up with the aim of simplifying the customer experience of mobile data services. OMTP is the organization behind the successful BONDI initiative and is backed by many of the largest mobile operators, manufacturers and software providers. OMTP deliverables assist the whole mobile ecosystem to develop open and compatible mobile devices. For more information, visit http://www.omtp.org.