Conformance and security challenges for personal communications in the reconfigurable era

The future generation of mobile communication systems will provide a diversity of services, with the means of secure software download and transparent reconfigurability, providing increased opportunity to all parties in the telecommunications value chain. In order that such a complex system can be realised and provide a comfortable, secure, yet compelling experience to the end-user, there are many challenges and issues to resolve, including end-to-end security within disparate domains of administration, efficient software download procedures, transparent terminal reconfigurability, configuration management and evolved network operations. The paper elaborates on two main issues in realising the reconfigurable system, namely ensuring conformance and security of reconfiguration. It provides an overview of current compliance/regulation from the European regulatory perspective. The paper also describes the problems and discusses the outcome of research undertaken in the field.