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OTA Flash Forum Publishes Interoperability White Paper

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif., Sept. 28, 2004 -- The OTA Flash Forum, a special interest group addressing the technical and operational issues facing over-the-air (OTA) management of mobile devices, today announced the publication of the first best practices document addressing interoperability of OTA device clients and management servers.

The FOTA Interoperability white paper, co-authored by several members of the OTA Flash Forum, provides a description of relevant device management standards and provides recommendations on extensions to improve interoperability support. The paper also suggests application programming interfaces (APIs) for supporting multi-vendor download and update clients in handsets.

"Many wireless companies now regard OTA firmware update as a baseline technology for broader device management initiatives, but it's still early in the commercial deployment arena, which makes the OTA Flash Forum's efforts to identify best practices and opportunities for standardization highly valuable," said Gene Wang, CEO of Bitfone and chairman of the OTA Flash Forum.

"The FOTA Interoperability white paper helps operators and manufacturers to understand the requirements for ensuring interoperability among multi-vendor FOTA clients and servers, and provides recommendations for reducing fragmented FOTA technology implementations, saving operators time and maintenance effort down the road," said Paul Edmonds, vice president of engineering, Insignia Solutions.

Bitfone's Director of Product Strategy, Sunil Marolia, will be presenting the paper at the GSMA Device Interoperability Group meeting in Singapore on September 30, 2004. The paper is also publicly available for download from the OTA Flash Forum website, at www.otaflashforum.org, as well as from several OTAFF member websites, including Bitfone and Insignia.

A major objective of the OTA Flash Forum is to contribute technical specifications for consideration by industry standards bodies, such as the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). The Forum's first submission to the OMA, the Firmware Update Protocol Specification, was adopted by the OMA Device Management Working Group as the baseline for an emerging OMA firmware update standard.

About OTA Flash Forum

The OTA Flash Forum is an open membership special interest group formed to foster the worldwide development, implementation and use of over-the-air (OTA) software updates for mobile devices. The OTA Flash Forum consists of leading carrier, manufacturer and solution provider companies which seek to promote widespread adoption of standards-based OTA update technology and contribute to the evolution of OTA services and applications in support of broader device management strategies. Founding members Bitfone, Gemplus, Motorola, Orange and T-Mobile USA initiated the OTA Flash Forum in June of 2003. For more information, visit www.otaflashforum.org.

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