The advent of new and sophisticated web services provided by Service
Providers to users, services that individually require authentication of
user and authorization of access, brings the needs for a new service to
facilitate such authentication and access, a service referred to as
Single Sign-On (SSO). The basic principle behind SSO is that users are
authenticated once at a particular level, and then access all their
subscribed services accepting that level of authentication.The present
invention provides a system, method and apparatus wherein a cellular
Federation of mobile network operators becomes an SSO authentication
authority for subscribers of this Federation accessing Service Providers
having such agreement with a mobile network operator of the Federation.
In accordance with this invention, mobile network operators can leverage
their operator-subscriber trust relationship in order to act as SSO
authentication authority for those subscribers accessing Service
Providers in a service domain other than the mobile network domain.