Orange SA, a subsidiary of France Telcom, announced today at the Digital ID World conference in San Francisco that France Telecom will act as an OpenID server-agent. That means the company will verify the identities of their 40 million users immediately, without the need for another account to be created, for any other site on the web that supports OpenID.
This according to Six Apart's David Recordon who blogged and Twittered excitedly from the event. Recordan, an expert in emerging identity issues, says that the move makes France Telecom the world's first major telco to support OpenID.
Recordan reports that the company also discussed allowing access to Orange branded mobile services using external accounts - presumably OpenID. That'll be putting their money where their mouths are - huge companies can offer to authenticate for other sites all day long without significantly changing the game.
This is a huge move for the federated identity movement and it's no surprise that it's coming from Orange - one of the most daring players in the whole sector. It may be the second biggest swath of OpenID accounts ever created, after AOL's adoption of the standard for its 63 million users in February. Unfortunately, not much has come of AOL's move - in large part I believe because the company has done as bad a job communicating about OpenID as the rest of the OpenID community has to date. Orange, on the other hand, already celebrates on their website some of the 3rd party services that users can now log in to with their France Telecom ID. Hopefully this will have a much bigger impact than AOL's adoption. Flexible, secure and federated identity with a single sign-on could still have a bright future ahead of it.
Many sites have been waiting for the OpenID 2.0 spec to be finalized before implementing OpenID. Believe it or not, that could happen as early as next week, according to a post on the blog of JanRain, a leading OpenID vendor.
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Great find Marshall - I like the guys at Janrain - just wish we could all make OpenID for normal people. :) It's just ugly right now.
Posted by: allen stern | September 24, 2007 6:20 PM@Allen
Yeah, it's confusing as all hell... and I program for a living.
Posted by: James Thomas | September 24, 2007 6:23 PMSaying they're 'one of the most daring players in the whole sector' is like saying the TRex is the least extinct dinosaur ;)
Posted by: Imran Ali | September 24, 2007 6:27 PMAllen, that's too true, but hopefully everybody knows it and is working hard to change. Communication alone has been a big issue. Did you see the video of this JanRain presentation a couple of weeks ago? http://tinyurl.com/2nctmm I think it's getting better. Hopefully implementation will improve too. Thanks for your comment, Allen.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick | September 24, 2007 6:28 PM@Imran - alright, I admit it, I was chuckling to myself when I wrote that - but your comment makes me laugh even more. Good point!
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick | September 24, 2007 6:29 PMOne thing we must decide on is if openid is what we want. I am not saying it isn't but I don't know if all nations agreed on this protocol.
Just imagine being able to use the same login on every social networking service. of course then a hacker is one password away from everything.
Posted by: allen stern | September 24, 2007 6:30 PMOpenID adoption is inevitable simply because it will be the most convenient means for an individual to manage their identity as the number of websites used proliferates. As Einstein said, "As simple a possible, but not simpler."
Ultimately, I think an OpenID, a SecureID and a few more would be adequate to keep the hackers out.
Posted by: Grant Czerepak | September 24, 2007 8:54 PM@Allen - I also worry about a hacker compromising my email address as they could then reset the passwords for my accounts. With OpenID you can use two factor authentication schemes which would make your OpenID account very difficult to compromise.
The guys at Vidoop have put together a cool video explaining OpenID as well
Posted by: Kevin Fox | September 24, 2007 10:30 PMthis is great...Very cool...Any eta on when FT will start accepting OpenId authentication for their services? As Marshall pointed out, that is really the putting their money where their mouths are...
Posted by: Jitendra | September 24, 2007 11:53 PM@Marshall LOL, remind me to tell you about my work on digital ID for Orange...it'll make you weep ;)
Posted by: Imran Ali | September 25, 2007 3:57 AMA big limit: there are *not* 40 million France Telecom eligible users, OpenID is only for the *mobile* customers (where Orange is one company among the others) not for all France Telecom customers (a lot, since the is the historical telco).
I am a France Telecom customer and yet was not able to get my OpenID.
Posted by: Stéphane Bortzmeyer | September 25, 2007 6:15 AMSome quick official comments to avoid any confusion:
1. We manage approx 40 million Orange User IDs in France (this is basically the total number of internet and/or mobile Orange users). All of these individuals can *activate* their OpenID service, but they don't get a key asigned to them by default for Privacy-related issues. So no, not 40 million OpenIDs yet.
2. This service is aimed at power users and is in soft launch.
3. Stéphane, you can create your OpenID key(s) at: http://openid.orange.fr. Service is in beta, so all *constructive* criticism is appreciated!
4. We haven't found many French relying parties. So if you know any interesting ones, don’t hesitate to send the info our way.
Regards,
Posted by: Ariel Gordon | September 25, 2007 9:23 AMAriel.
> 3. Stéphane, you can create your OpenID key(s)
No, I cannot. I am a subscriber of a fixed line, not an Orange mobile consumer. And the Web site you mention clearly said you must be a *mobile* user.
The other possibility ("Visitor of orange.fr") does not work, it keeps saying "Le format de l’adresse mail que vous avez choisie est incorrect." ("The email address has an incorrect format")
Posted by: Stéphane Bortzmeyer | September 25, 2007 1:12 PM