OMA SpecWorks, previously the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is a
standards organization
A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization (SDO), or standards setting organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary function is developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpr ...
which develops
open
Open or OPEN may refer to:
Music
* Open (band), Australian pop/rock band
* The Open (band), English indie rock band
* ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969
* ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999
* ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001
* ''Open'' ( ...
,
international
International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations".
International may also refer to:
Music Albums
* ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011
* ''International'' (New Order album), 2002
* ''International'' (The T ...
technical standard
A technical standard is an established norm or requirement for a repeatable technical task which is applied to a common and repeated use of rules, conditions, guidelines or characteristics for products or related processes and production methods, ...
s for the
mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...
industry. It is a
nonprofit Non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from g ...
(NGO), not a formal government-sponsored standards organization as is the
International Telecommunication Union
The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...
(ITU): a forum for industry
stakeholders to agree on common
specifications
A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard.
There are different types of technical or engineering specificati ...
for products and services.
History
The OMA was created in June 2002 as an answer to the proliferation of
industry forums each dealing with a few application protocols: WAP Forum (focused on browsing and device provisioning protocols), the
Wireless Village
Wireless Village is a set of specifications for mobile instant messaging and presence services. It is intended to be a standard for cellphones and mobile devices to use these services across platforms.
Many wireless phones now include mobile inst ...
(focused on instant messaging and presence),
The SyncML Initiative The SyncML Initiative, Ltd. was a non-profit corporation formed by a group of companies who co-operated to produce an open standard for data synchronization and device management.
Prior to SyncML, data synchronization and device management had ...
(focused on data synchronization), the Location Interoperability Forum, the Mobile Games Interoperability Forum, and the Mobile Wireless Internet Forum. Each of these forums had its bylaws, its decision-taking procedures, its release schedules, and in some instances there was some overlap in the specifications, causing duplication of work.
Members include traditional wireless industry players such as equipment and mobile systems manufacturers (
Ericsson
(lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in informa ...
,
ZTE
ZTE Corporation is a Chinese partially state-owned technology company that specializes in telecommunication. Founded in 1985, ZTE is listed on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges.
ZTE's core business is wireless, exchange, opt ...
,
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...
,
Qualcomm,
Rohde & Schwarz
Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co KG (, ) is an international electronics group specializing in the fields of electronic test equipment, broadcast & media, cybersecurity, radiomonitoring and radiolocation, and radiocommunication. The company provides ...
) and mobile operators (
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
,
NTT Docomo,
Orange
Orange most often refers to:
*Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis''
** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower
*Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum
* ...
,
T-Mobile
T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic ( T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland ( T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobil ...
,
Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas ...
), and also software vendors (
Gemalto
Gemalto was an international digital security company providing software applications, secure personal devices such as smart cards and tokens, and managed services. It was formed in June 2006 by the merger of two companies, Axalto and Gemplus ...
,
Mavenir
HRMavenir Systems, Inc. dba Mavenir is an American telecommunications software company, created in 2017 as a result of a three-way merger of existing companies and technologies, that develops and supplies cloud-native software to the communicat ...
and others).
In March, 2018, it merged with the
IPSO Alliance
The Internet Protocol for Smart Objects (IPSO) Alliance was an international technical standards organization promoting the Internet Protocol (IP) for what it calls "smart object" communications. The IPSO Alliance was a non-profit organization fou ...
to form OMA SpecWorks.
Related standards bodies include: 3rd Generation Partnership Project (
3GPP),
3rd Generation Partnership Project 2
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) is a collaboration between telecommunications associations to make a globally applicable third generation ( 3G) mobile phone system specification within the scope of the ITU's IMT-2000 project. In ...
(3GPP2),
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...
(IETF) and the
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working ...
(W3C).
Its mission is to provide
Interoperability
Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader defi ...
of services across countries, operators and mobile terminals.
The OMA only standardises applicative protocols; OMA specifications are intended to work with any cellular network technologies being used to provide networking and data transport. These networking technology are specified by outside parties. In particular, OMA specifications for a given function are the same with either
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...
,
UMTS
The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the In ...
, or
CDMA2000 networks.
Adherence to the standards is entirely voluntary; the OMA does not have a mandative role..
OMA members that own
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
rights (e.g.
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
s) on technologies that are essential to realizing a specification agree in advance to provide
licenses to their technology on "fair,
reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing
Reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms, also known as fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, denote a voluntary licensing commitment that standards organizations often request from the owner of an intellectual property r ...
" terms to other members.
OMA is incorporated in California, United States.
Standard specifications
The OMA maintains many specifications, including:
* Browsing specifications, now named ''Browser and Content'', formerly named
WAP browsing; in current version, these specifications rely essentially on
XHTML Mobile Profile
XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP) is a hypertextual computer language standard designed specifically for mobile phones and other resource-constrained devices.
It is an XHTML document type defined by the Open Mobile Alliance. XHTML-MP is derived fr ...
*
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) specifications
*
OMA DRM
OMA DRM is a digital rights management (DRM) system invented by the Open Mobile Alliance, whose members represent mobile phone manufacturers (e.g. Nokia, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, BenQ-Siemens), mobile system manufacturers (e.g. Er ...
specifications for
Digital Rights Management
*
OMA Instant Messaging and Presence Service (OMA IMPS) specification, which is a system for instant messaging on mobile phones; formerly named
Wireless Village
Wireless Village is a set of specifications for mobile instant messaging and presence services. It is intended to be a standard for cellphones and mobile devices to use these services across platforms.
Many wireless phones now include mobile inst ...
* OMA SIMPLE IM instant messaging based on
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) SIMPLE
* OMA CAB Converged Address Book, a social address book service standard
* OMA CPM Converged IP Messaging, the underlying enabler for
Rich Communication Services
Rich Communication Services (RCS) is a communication protocol between mobile telephone carriers and between phone and carrier, aiming at replacing SMS messages with a text-message system that is richer, provides phonebook polling (for service dis ...
* OMA Lock and Wipe (LAWMO) specifications for those functions
* OMA Lightweight M2M (LwM2M)
OMA LWM2M specifications for machine to machine functions
*
OMA Client Provisioning (OMA CP) specification for
provisioning
In telecommunication, provisioning involves the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide new services to its users. In National Security/Emergency Preparedness telecommunications services, ''"provisioning"'' equates to ...
* OMA Data Synchronization (OMA DS) specification for
data synchronization
Data synchronization is the process of establishing consistency between source and target data stores, and the continuous harmonization of the data over time. It is fundamental to a wide variety of applications, including file synchronization and m ...
using
SyncML
SyncML (Synchronization Markup Language) is the former name for a platform-independent information synchronization standard. The project is currently referred to as ''Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronization and Device Management''. The purpose o ...
*
OMA Device Management (OMA DM) specification for
mobile device management using
SyncML
SyncML (Synchronization Markup Language) is the former name for a platform-independent information synchronization standard. The project is currently referred to as ''Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronization and Device Management''. The purpose o ...
*
OMA BCAST specification for Mobile Broadcast Services
* OMA
Rich Media Environment (RME) specification
* OMA OpenCMAPI Connection Management APIs
* OMA PoC specification for
Push to talk
Push-to-talk (PTT), also known as press-to-transmit, is a method of having conversations or talking on half-duplex communication lines, including two-way radio, using a momentary button to switch from voice reception mode to transmit mode.
H ...
Over Cellular (PoC)
*
OMA Presence SIMPLE specification for presence based on
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) SIMPLE
*
OMA Service Environment
*
FUMO Firmware update
*
Secure User Plane Location Protocol (SUPL),
an IP-based service for
assisted GPS
Assisted GNSS (A-GNSS) is a GNSS augmentation system that often significantly improves the startup performance—i.e., time-to-first-fix (TTFF)—of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). A-GNSS works by providing the necessary data to the ...
on handsets
*
Mobile Location Protocol (MLP), an IP-based protocol for obtaining the position/location of mobile handset
* Wireless Application Protocol 1 (WAP1), 5-layer stack of protocols
* OMA LOCSIP Location in SIP/IP Core
*
Software Component Management Object (SCOMO), allows a management authority to perform software management on a remote device
The OMA specifications inspired or formed the base for the following:
*
NGSI-LD is an API and information model specified by
ETSI based (with permission) on OMA specifications NGSI-09 and NGSI-10, extending them to provide bindings and to formally use property graphs, with node and relationship (edge) types that may play the role of labels in formerly-mentioned models ''and'' support semantic referencing by inheriting classes defined in shared
ontologies
In computer science and information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definition of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, and entities that substantiate one, many, or all domains ...
.
See also
*
Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS)
*
LiMo Foundation
*
Content Management Interface Content Management Interface (CMI) in computer software is an Open Mobile Alliance enabler that provides a standardized way for content providers to interact with service providers ( network operators).
CMI is an interface between content provider ...
*
Open Handset Alliance
The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) is a consortium of 84 firms to develop open standards for mobile devices. Member firms include HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Google, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, T-Mobile, ...
*
Mobile Platform
*
3GPP
*
European Telecommunications Standards Institute
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization in the field of information and communications. ETSI supports the development and testing of global technical standard ...
(ETSI)
*
List of wireless router firmware projects
List of software created and maintained by people other than the manufacturer of the product. The extent of support for (and testing on) particular hardware varies from project to project.
Embedded
Notable custom-firmware projects for wireless ro ...
*
Mobile Device Management
*
List of Mobile Device Management Software
References
External links
*
{{Mobile phones
Mobile telecommunications standards
Open standards
Telecommunications organizations
Business organizations based in the United States
Mobile phone industry