Abstract

This paper describes a range of infrastructural issues that impact on the way that mobile government services are being and will be designed and deployed. In this sense, mobile government services are just like many other areas of mobile computing, dominated by the push to deploy Internet technologies on wireless networks. The first issue that is addressed is that of the ownership of the infrastructure. It is argued that the concept of Open Access Networks (OANs) is an important one, especially for publicly funded wireless networks. The next issue addressed is the use of IPv6 instead of IPv4 as the main transport technology. Political and technical reasons for the choice of IPv6 are discussed. Finally the paper addresses the software used to develop services and touches on the debates on appropriate middleware architectures for mobile services.