. In terms of relevance to the supply chain, the multi-service IICs that resell mobile services are most important. These IICs are competing to build bundled service packages. Mobile services are becoming more and more important to customers. Thus, IIC resellers must be able to order and deliver mobile services reliably. Luckily, most of this process is embedded in their billing and customer management systems. For example, mobile resellers do not face the kind of infrastructure provisioning problems landline resellers encounter. Their transactions are more closely tied to billing and customer management applications, phone number reservations and service ordering in general. Mobile devices. Defining the mobile device has practically become a task for sociologists. From a purely technical point of view, a mobile device is any kind of wireless device that can communicate with other devices using a Chapter 3 - Automating the Internet Infrastructure Supply Chain mobile network. This includes voice phones, voice/Web phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), palmtops, and devices with similar functions. More and more devices hit the market every day, creating many challenges. IICs have very little control over the reliability or maintenance of their customers' equipment. Mobile devices are non-standard and inconsistent in terms of functionality. Many of the more advanced data and Internet services being offered require proprietary client-server software and custom peripherals (such as external modems for PDAs). Content transformation technology is not yet widespread. In many cases, mobile Web offerings are tied to specific data formats and protocols which are not designed to be read by mobile devices. In the end, the mobile device is the interface point to the customer. IICs must keep up with new device functionality developments in order to coordinate their service creation plans. Network equipment vendors. These are the companies that provide the switching and radio frequency equipment from which mobile networks a