Despite the deceiving name, SoftBank Corp. has nothing to do with banks. It is a major Japanese telecommunication media corporation, specializing in broadband internet access, regular and cellular telephones, marketing etc. Moreover, it is the third largest mobile provider in Japan. According to the official press release, SoftBank is partnering up with its American colleague, a telecommunication company TBCASoft in order to operate a blockchain group intended for identification and authentication purposes. The cooperation will take place under the supervision of Carrier Blockchain Study Group (CBSG), a blockchain-based platform specifically for telecommunication companies, which is engaged in applying Internet of Things, researching personal identification technologies and various ways of using blockchain. The joint blockchain working group is going to focus on CrossCarrier Identification System, the framework developed by TBCASoft. Both parties strongly believe that the authentication and identification processes should not be centralized and entrusted to one particular body. CCIS is going to use the blockchain and distributed ledger technologies to decentralize the data and protect the information on individuals from identity theft and different kinds of scams. “We envision that individuals should create encrypted digital identities, instead of using and storing multiple usernames and passwords on databases here and there with various qualities of privacy protection. We have been working with TBCASoft on solving identification and authentication problems,” stated Takeshi Fukuizumi, the Vice President of SoftBank Corp. Subscribe to The Coin Shark news in Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coinshark/