Iain McCallum, mobile industry veteran and MEF Advisor shares discussions from the MEF Connects personal data and Identity sessions held in Barcelona in February.
At the behest of many MEF Members who, following the formal cancellation of MWC2020, had decided to travel to Barcelona for impromptu gatherings and one-to-one meetings (and to partake of some excellent restaurants that would ordinarily have been booked weeks if not months in advance I’d wager…), MEF prepared for Members and interested onlookers alike a series of Programme Working Group sessions ably and very kindly supported by the good people at Cellusys at their building next to the Europa Fira metro station near the MWC2020 site.
Watch the Personal data & Identity panel session in full
After updating the PD&I Working Group on the progress made since our last meeting, I was asked to moderate the Personal Data & Identity (PD&I) session with presentations from both Laurent Frainais of BOKU on their Seamless & Secure PSD2 SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) product solutions and Marie Austenaa of Signicat on their digital identity solution to help combat rising fraud levels for Telia in Sweden and what Telcos can learn from banks on digital onboarding  – MEF Members can view these presentations and many other MEF Programme sessions here on the website – which provoked several questions from the surprisingly large turnout.
There was significant discussion in the panel on what role governments need to play in future to help drive the development of secure and efficient identity ecosystems
This was followed by a panel Q & A session with Marie, Laurent and Dario Betti, MEF CEO touching on areas such as consumer trust in online transacting, (neatly stealing Dario’s thunder for the next session on…MEF’s Annual Consumer Trust Report), what the industry needs to do in the coming years to counter and remedy trust issues (consumer education, governmental and regulatory clarity, MNOs positioning themselves more boldly as natural ID Provider, drastic reduction in unnecessary and harmful data harvesting, etc), combat fraud (proactive ecosystem development, fit-for-purpose regulation, more secure product solutions etc), RCS & Verified Sender, the obvious potential for digital transacting and administration of taxes, passport applications, driving licences amongst many others.
Dario went on to reveal several interesting statistics from MEF’s Annual Consumer Trust Report and called for the digital industry to inject some urgency into seriously debating and taking action to counter the increasingly negative viewpoint of consumers globally around online interactions, transactions, data-exchange etc.
There was significant discussion in the panel on what role governments need to play in future to help drive the development of secure and efficient identity ecosystems with clearly defined roles for market players, clearer and more timely regulation on the use (or misuse…) of consumer citizens’ personal data, greater consultation with both industry and public alike and more.
There is much else of interest in the video of this session, please feel free to view it here and to contact me directly if you have any thoughts on the subjects raised here or if you have any other PD&I-related questions.
My thanks again to the panellists and audience for this very productive session at NOT-MWC2020.
Iain is a MEF Advisor and has, since 2012, worked extensively with mobile network operators across Europe and the Russian Federation to drive adoption and uptake of the GSMA’s Mobile Connect identity, RCS and Smart Cities initiatives. Prior to this, he ran third-party Messaging at Telefonica O2 UK from 2002 until 2010, working with Aggregators and Brands (Lloyds, ITV, C4, et al), driving the uptake of premium and bulk services and managing the issues of self regulation (PayForIT, a UK joint-MNO initiative), and subscriber protection.
If you are interested in finding out more about The PD&I Working Group contact Iain.
MEF Members – Watch more panels
MWC 2020 may have been rightfully cancelled, but with many MEF Members were still in Barcelona to hold meetings, catch up with colleagues and discuss the issues facing the Global telco ecosystem, MEF created a line-up of sessions across our programmes. MEF Members – log in now to watch the presentations and download the slides.
Members – Log in now >Â
