Oyster is not ITSO-compliant and the DfT, who pay the TOC bills, won't
pay for non-ITSO-compliant kit. Figures.

See my comments elsewhere - this is all "smoke and mirrors" from the
TOCs.

Luckily, moves to make Oyster ITSO-compliant seem to be progressing at
last.

But only off the back of the E Money contract that TfL are letting which
will exploit the Oyster card holding base. There are ITSO compatible
cards and readers being trialled on a number of bus services in West
London at present. This is not funded by government but by TfL. The
equipment is also provided by the great evil, money grabbing Transys
company who, of course, have no interest in ITSO compatibility!

ITSO compatible equipment will be funded commercially off the back of a
TfL initiative. There is no need for TfL to be doing any of this. I'd
be interested to see if the TOCs will be prepared to "take a risk" about
co-operating with the wider scheme or whether they will still lock
themselves away in their little insular world of 7 year franchises
pretending the real world isn't outside.

The TOCs need to "grow up" and understand where their best interests
lie. Being awkward about a major ticketing initiative in the country's
capital city is not the way to go about things, IMO.

http://www.londonconnects.gov.uk/_db...rities_v6a.doc

is quite an interesting document listing the various smartcard
projects for the London boroughs, including possible integration with
Oystercard and ITSO. It also comments on the various smartcard
technologies. In particular, it says that MiFare cards are not
considered to be very secure, and would not be used in an e-money
application.