We live in a world of complex technology. Especially the world of personal computers, and even worse when we take them out of the office and still want to connect them back to the network. Mobile phone networks are much simpler by comparison. Switch on, use, get billed (or pay up front). All the complicated stuff happens behind the scenes.
As far as computer networking goes, public wireless local area networks (public WLANs or Wi-Fi) are a simple idea, but the user authentication and billing is neither simple nor consistent. No wonder so many companies view the issue of roaming between different WLAN providers as a market opportunity. Part of the problem is that portable computers haven't had unique identities unlike mobile phones. The other issue is that computer standards aren't quite as strictly applied as those in the mobile phone industry.
Ericsson has decided to tackle this and last week demonstrated the first SIM-card logon for WLAN, based on 3GPP standards. 3GPP, the 3G Project Partnership, is the agglomeration of international standards bodies that develops and publishes the third generation wireless standards. The major standards bodies from around the world - US (T1), Europe (ETSI), Japan (ARIB), Korea (ETRI) and China (CWTS) are represented, as are the major technology companies.
The demonstration showed a WLAN connected laptop authenticated by a GSM network with the same ease as a regular mobile phone call over GSM. Anyone who's signed up his or her laptop to use any current WLAN hotspot will know just how different the experience is to using a mobile phone.
News source: IT-Director - WLAN logs onto GSM SIMplicity
