Mobile Operators Define the Open Mobile Terminal Platform

Baffled by the sheer range of application user interfaces on mobile phones? I certainly am – but then the rich diversity of cash point interfaces leaves me standing there confused and moneyless on the best of days.

To combat the confusion and fragmentation that comes with the diversity of mobile applications and their use, mm02, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, SMART Communications, Telefónica Móviles, Telecom Italia Mobile, T-Mobile and Vodafone have grouped together to form OMTP – the Open Mobile Terminal Platform.

Their aim is to define the requirements necessary for mobile devices to deliver openly available standardised application interfaces – so you’ll at least have half a chance next time you try to fight your way round your new phone address book, because it’ll work much like the last one you saw.

They’ll do this by establishing an open frame work for device manufacturers like Nokia and Siemens, plus their software and hardware suppliers, inviting them to develop OMTP compliant products.

Of course, there is a slim chance that phone manufacturers could tell the OMTP group to go and take a jump.

The OMTP

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?