In message . com, at
06:58:50 on Fri, 3 Aug 2007, W14_Fishbourne
remarked:
The second technology will be to use a chip inside your mobile phone
which will take the place of (and remove the need for) a separate
piece of plastic called a smartcard. You will wave your phone over a
smartcard reader on the gateline in the same way that you wave a
smartcard. It doesn't matter if your battery goes flat during the
journey - the power to read the chip comes from the reader (just as
you don't have a battery in your Oyster card).

Does this mean you have to buy a new phone, or is the RFID embedded in a
new SIM (there was mention of Orange and SIMs earlier).

I'm still struggling to understand why this is so much better than
having the same chip in a bit of plastic in your wallet (I go out
without a phone more often than without a wallet) and thread
convergence if you are using a Railcard, you need to be carrying your
wallet anyway!
--
Roland Perry

On 3 Aug, 13:40, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
12:45:50 on Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Chris Johns remarked:

So are they suggesting everyone waves their phone screen at the
barriers, having fumbled around to retrieve a picture message with a
barcode on it? And will the phone then have its amount of credit updated
by SMS (I can't see how else it would work).

W14_Fishborne's useful post elsewhere on this thread clears up the
confusion of two separate mobile phone ticketing technologies.


First tried this on the ftr (York) before the scrapped the entire
machine ticket system. It was fiddly, which makes it slow.

You could get an email of the barcode and print it out which was a lot
easier than faffing with your phone, but compared to non-contact (or
even the normal train mag-strip) cards, still slow to use.

Chiltern are allegedly trialling a system like this for a subset of
their Advance Purchase tickets.

No allegedly about it. If you go to Marylebone station you'll see that
at least one automatic gate has been equipped with a bar code reader.
I can imagine that it's probably best not to line up behind someone
struggling to scan their mobile's barcode at such a gate though!

On Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Paul Scott wrote:

"Bob" wrote in message
oups.com...
http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/...9168037,00.htm

Of course if RFID chips are built into phones as a secondary function
that would be useful...

Could Bluetooth be used for this? A lot of phones have that.


tom

--
Standing on the shoulders of Google

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message . com, at
06:58:50 on Fri, 3 Aug 2007, W14_Fishbourne
remarked:
The second technology will be to use a chip inside your mobile phone
which will take the place of (and remove the need for) a separate
piece of plastic called a smartcard. You will wave your phone over a
smartcard reader on the gateline in the same way that you wave a
smartcard. It doesn't matter if your battery goes flat during the
journey - the power to read the chip comes from the reader (just as
you don't have a battery in your Oyster card).

Does this mean you have to buy a new phone,

Almost certainly, Yes

or is the RFID embedded in a new SIM (there was mention of Orange and SIMs
earlier).

I'm still struggling to understand why this is so much better than having
the same chip in a bit of plastic in your wallet (I go out without a phone
more often than without a wallet) and thread convergence if you are
using a Railcard, you need to be carrying your wallet anyway!

Because it's a solution looking for a problem. The mobile
phone companies are always looking at ways of making
extra money and this "(not so) micro payment using your
phone" is the next idea that they are trying to sell.

It seems that they have managed to sell the idea to a rail
company to help them market it.

But ISTM that none of the previous attempts to sell
electronic micro payments have been accepted by the
population, it will surprise me if this one is any different.

tim

On 3 Aug, 15:24, Roland Perry wrote:
In message . com, at
06:58:50 on Fri, 3 Aug 2007, W14_Fishbourne
remarked:

The second technology will be to use a chip inside your mobile phone
which will take the place of (and remove the need for) a separate
piece of plastic called a smartcard. You will wave your phone over a
smartcard reader on the gateline in the same way that you wave a
smartcard. It doesn't matter if your battery goes flat during the
journey - the power to read the chip comes from the reader (just as
you don't have a battery in your Oyster card).

Does this mean you have to buy a new phone, or is the RFID embedded in a
new SIM (there was mention of Orange and SIMs earlier).

I believe it'd be a component of the mobile phone itself - see this
link for information on a couple of Nokia models with RFID capability
in the shell of the phone:
http://www.rfid-weblog.com/50226711/...nokia_5140.php
or http://tinyurl.com/yttc3s

Of course an RFID chip need not be independent of the phone - they
could presumably be connected up so that information on the RFID could
be updated by the phone, so for example the credit in an RFID pay as
you go travel ticket (like an Oyster card) could be topped up over the
air. Of course the system could be arranged so that travel expenditure
was debited from the users mobile bill or mobile PAYG balance, without
the need for any such link. The number of various different methods
for how any such scheme might work are many.

I'd imagine that an RFID-enabled SIM might not work, as in many
mobiles the battery would present a barrier between the SIM and any
potential RFID reader in the 'outside world'.


I'm still struggling to understand why this is so much better than
having the same chip in a bit of plastic in your wallet (I go out
without a phone more often than without a wallet) and thread
convergence if you are using a Railcard, you need to be carrying your
wallet anyway!
--
Roland Perry

I share your scepticism.

The 'ticket via RFID embedded in mobile phone casing' idea is just an
extension of the concept of using RFID-in-mobile as a replacement for
cash, a kind of wave-and-pay embedded in a mobile (wave-and-pay being
the upcoming method of paying for small transactions using an RFID-
enabled credit/debit card without the need for a PIN, already in use
in the states).

I'd guess that logic is that a mobile is one item that there's a fair
guarantee that (many) people will have on their person much of the
time, which is a fair enough assumption.

However I'm not sure that people would be that willing to get their
mobile out to pay for small purchases at shops, especially if it was a
flashy new model - someone might pinch it! Likewise at a station -
especially given the advice (on signs and posters) warning people off
of using their mobiles when they get out of a station. Plus I'm not
too sure about any idea of using a mobile on automatic gates - they'd
be the constant clatter of mobiles being dropped and smashing up on
concrete floor as people lost their grip on them, especially at the
rush hour!

On 3 Aug, 16:40, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Paul Scott wrote:
"Bob" wrote in message
roups.com...
http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/...9168037,00.htm

Of course if RFID chips are built into phones as a secondary function
that would be useful...

Could Bluetooth be used for this? A lot of phones have that.

tom


I've heard that suggested and subsequently shot-down before - the
Bluetooth technology is apparently no good for such a data transaction.

Of course, the most practical solution might be to have a chip
embedded in your arm, as they do with many pets these days. Then, not
only is there no chance of you losing your ticket or leaving it at
home, but you also cannot fraudulently transfer it to anyone else.
Furthermore, if you ever got lost and insensible, they would know
where to return you. It could also be updated while you were having a
bath by passing the signal down the water pipe.

In message , at 16:43:11 on Fri, 3
Aug 2007, tim..... remarked:
Does this mean you have to buy a new phone,

Almost certainly, Yes

The average age of phones in our household is about three years (and we
don't have any plans to buy more than one new one a year, if that,
between the four of us). Another problem is that there'll only be a very
limited range of phones with the new gadget in to start with, so if
you've chosen one because of some other set of features you wanted [1]
you could well still not get an rfid.

[1] It amazes me that with several hundred models to choose from at any
one time, that we (in our household) find it's so easy to whittle the
list down to a handful, and then just one model, if you know what it is
you are looking for.
--
Roland Perry

On 3 Aug, 16:43, "tim....." wrote:
"Roland Perry" wrote:

(snip)

I'm still struggling to understand why this is so much better than having
the same chip in a bit of plastic in your wallet (I go out without a phone
more often than without a wallet) and thread convergence if you are
using a Railcard, you need to be carrying your wallet anyway!

Because it's a solution looking for a problem. The mobile
phone companies are always looking at ways of making
extra money and this "(not so) micro payment using your
phone" is the next idea that they are trying to sell.

It seems that they have managed to sell the idea to a rail
company to help them market it.

But ISTM that none of the previous attempts to sell
electronic micro payments have been accepted by the
population, it will surprise me if this one is any different.

tim

I'm also a sceptic (see my other posts on this thread) but there is a
whole new wave (excuse the pun) of micro-payments on the way... the
Barclaycard OnePulse card, to be launched this september in London,
will include wave-and-pay RFID technology for purchases under £10, as
well as Oyster card capability (the balance held in the virtual Oyster
purse will be separate from the wave-and-pay system).

Incidentally wave-and-pay would appear to be the generic term -
Visa calls it "Visa payWave":
(http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/paywave/index.html)
and Barclays appear to call the technology "OneTouch".

The ThriftyScot article (first link below) says that the Royal Bank of
Scotland (owners of NatWest) and American Express plan cards using
this technology.

What will be interesting is how many retailers will have point-of-sale
machines that will be wave-and-pay capable. One part of me thinks that
many POS systems will be pretty new, given the recent shift over to
Chip and PIN cards - but that said perhaps many of these systems were
designed with expansion in mind.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that wave-and-pay will
gradually blossom and be a success (though I think I'll stick to cash,
I don't want my bank knowing all my movements and small purchases I
make!).

I'm more sceptical about wave-and-pay/RFID embedded into mobiles
though - a mobile is far more bulky that a card, it's less tolerant of
being dropped and it's more susceptible to being nicked

-----
For more on the Barclays OnePulse card see
http://www.thriftyscot.co.uk/Finance...edit-card.html
http://www.newsroom.barclays.co.uk/C...6&NewsAreaID=2
https://www.barclaycard.co.uk/barcla...istration.html

In message .com, at
08:59:17 on Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Mizter T remarked:
Of course the system could be arranged so that travel expenditure
was debited from the users mobile bill or mobile PAYG balance, without
the need for any such link. The number of various different methods
for how any such scheme might work are many.

Mr Virgin seems pretty implacable that my phone has a £100 a month
credit limit (despite my having a good credit record with both him and
everyone else over the years). Wouldn't even buy me a SOR to London

I'd imagine that an RFID-enabled SIM might not work, as in many
mobiles the battery would present a barrier between the SIM and any
potential RFID reader in the 'outside world'.

Yes, I had considered that, which is a shame because it would be a
better solution.
--
Roland Perry