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'' (Gerd Dudek, Buschi Niebergall, and Edward Vesala album), 1979 * ''Open'' (Go ...

, international

technical standard A technical standard is an established Social norm, 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 producti ...

s for the

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

industry. It is a

nonprofit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

Non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

(NGO), not a formal government-sponsored standards organization as is the

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)In the other common languages of the ITU: * * is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information ...

(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 (focused on instant messaging and presence), The SyncML Initiative (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 (), commonly known as Ericsson (), is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one ...

, ZTE,

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

, Rohde & Schwarz) and mobile operators (

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

, NTT Docomo, Orange,

T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand of telecommunications by Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (, ; often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a partially state-owned German telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn and the largest telec ...

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc. ( ), is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the ...

), and also software vendors (

Gemalto Gemalto was an international digital security company providing software applications, secure personal devices such as smart cards and tokens, e-wallets and managed services. It was formed in June 2006 by the merger of two companies, Axalto and ...

, Mavenir and others). In March, 2018, it merged with the IPSO Alliance to form OMA SpecWorks. Related standards bodies include: 3rd Generation Partnership Project (

3GPP The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is an umbrella term for a number of standards organizations which develop protocols for mobile telecommunications. Its best known work is the development and maintenance of: * GSM and related 2G and ...

3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 The 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) was 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. ...

(3GPP2),

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...

(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 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

(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 de ...

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 family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. UMTS uses Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technolog ...

, or

CDMA2000 CDMA2000 (also known as C2K or IMT Multi‑Carrier (IMT‑MC)) is a family of 3G mobile technology standards for sending voice, data, and signaling data between mobile phones and cell sites. It is developed by 3GPP2 as a backwards-compatib ...

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, co ...

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 sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s) on technologies that are essential to realizing a specification agree in advance to provide

license A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another part ...

s 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 *

Multimedia Messaging Service Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from a mobile phone over a cellular network. Users and providers may refer to such a message as a PXT, a picture message, or a multimedia ...

(MMS) specifications * OMA DRM specifications for

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures, such as access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM ...

OMA Instant Messaging and Presence Service The OMA Instant Messaging and Presence Service (IMPS) is an Open Mobile Alliance enabler for Instant Messaging and Presence. The Wireless Village consortium developed the first cut of the specifications. After Wireless Village was merged with ...

(OMA IMPS) specification, which is a system for instant messaging on mobile phones; formerly named Wireless Village * OMA SIMPLE IM instant messaging based on

Session Initiation Protocol The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating communication sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications. SIP is used in Internet telephony, in private IP telepho ...

(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 standard for instant messaging, primarily for mobile phones, developed and defined by the GSM Association (GSMA). It aims to be a replacement of SMS and Multimedia Messaging Service, ...

* 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 Provisioning may refer to: * Provisioning (technology), the equipping of a telecommunications network or IT resources * Provisioning (cruise ship), supplying a vessel for an extended voyage ** Provisioning of USS ''Constitution'' * Provisionin ...

* 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 a ...

using SyncML * OMA Device Management (OMA DM) specification for

mobile device management Mobile device management (MDM) is the administration of mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers, and laptops. MDM is usually implemented with the use of a third-party product that has management features for particular vendors of ...

using SyncML * 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. ...

Over Cellular (PoC) * OMA Presence SIMPLE specification for presence based on

(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, time-to-first-fix (TTFF)—of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). A-GNSS works by providing the nece ...

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 The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization operating in the field of Information and communications technology, information and communications. ETSI supports the de ...

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 information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definitions of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, or entities that pertain to one, many, or all domains of discourse. More ...

References

External links

* {{Mobile phones Mobile telecommunications standards Open standards Telecommunications organizations Business organizations based in the United States Mobile phone industry

History

Standard specifications

See also

References

External links