On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 18:11:26 +0000, Paul Corfield
wrote:

On Wed, 4 Jan 2006 00:43 +0000 (GMT Standard Time),
(Colin Rosenstiel) wrote:

In article .com, (Richard Adamfi) wrote:

If you think it is a con, blame the TOCs for not accepting Oyster,
rather than Ken/TfL.

The TOCs were forced by the Government not to adopt Oyster because it was not Standards-compliant.

This is news to me - where did you get this snippet of information from?

The standards problem has been in the railway press - probably in
Modern Railways and elsewhere.

Oh and what standards?

Integrated Transport Smartcard Organisation ones:
http://www.itso.org.uk

If the TOCs were to go ahead and fit Oyster, there could be a problem
if and when ITSO-compliant cards are in widespread use everywhere
else. People arriving in London would discover that the card they use
to buy transport tickets, in libraries or for school dinners (etc)
couldn't be used in London, and Londoners would find they couldn't use
their Oyster cards on National Rail ITSO systems outside London.

Fitting duplicate systems at every station would be wasteful, but
Oyster won't be used beyond London, and so the railways are meant to
use inter-operable ITSO cards which would work with everyone else's
systems.

Is Oyster technology proprietory, or can anyone get the specs and make
their own kit if they want?
--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK