Grit in the Oyster
 

On 3 Aug, 20:11, W14_Fishbourne wrote:
On Aug 3, 7:59 pm, "tim....." wrote:



Being technically compatible and using the same stored
value may not be the same thing :-(

tim

For example, unless Transport for London wants to become a bank, with
all the regulatory implications of that, Oyster Pay As You Go will
never become available for use outside of London.

Hmm... I understand the basic argument - however one could argue the
same logic would apply to TOCs who issue smartcards that can be used
on other TOCs services - and an interchangeable smartcard system is
what the DfT are after, is it not? Unless any national smartcard
scheme is going to involve ATOC becoming a bank?

Additionally one couldn't just argue TfL were merely holding money as
part of the fares settlement procedures. After all, Oyster PAYG can
already be used on some National Rail routes in London, and in the new
year it'll be available for use on several more routes (routes that
don't currently have interavailable ticketing with the Underground).

I'm no lawyer but I'm far from convinced that sure any such concerns
aren't insurmountable.

Grit in the Oyster
 

On 3 Aug, 20:11, Dave Newt wrote:
wrote:
On 3 Aug, 08:59, Bob wrote:
http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/...9168037,00.htm

Of course this will mean the need for cyber gripping.

Why oh why is it assumed that everyone has a mobile ? And what happens
with a mobile ticket if your battery goes flat ?

It's not much different to expecting people not to leave their wallet at
home, is it?

My wallet doesn't go flat.

Well, it does, but that'd be my fault for expending it's charge at the
bar.

Anyway if you read elsewhere on this thread it would appear that RFID-
embedded-in-mobile-shell ticketing wouldn't necessarily require the
phone to have any battery power. In a simple implementation the
phone's casing is basically acting as if it were an RFID card.

Barcode-on-mobile ticketing does however require a turned-on mobile to
work.

Grit in the Oyster
 

On 3 Aug, 20:39, "Paul Scott" wrote:
"tim....." wrote in message

...



Adding new bits to a mobile buggers up the standby time.
And as longer standby time is the holy grail that the
networks keep demanding the extra bits don't happen
until everyone is sure that there is a need.

Er (apart from space taken up) why would a separate but embedded rfid device
cause power problems? There doesn't seem to be much of a problem with the
standby time of an Oyster card... If the mobile is able to interrogate its
chip to check balance or history I would have thought consumption would be
trivial compared with most other important functions like ringing, calling,
texting etc...

Seriously though, what size is the actual device embedded in the card?
Perhaps a way of mounting it on say a watch strap, or bracelet or some such
might catch on...

Paul


Basically, in a simple implementation, the shell/casing of the mobile
is an RFID card in another form.

I can however imagine there might be a desire for a more complex
integrated implementation where the mobile device was to the RFID
element - for example so one could receive things over the air that
were put on the RFID chip (e.g. topping up the PAYG credit balance
over the air for example). Such an implementation might require the
mobile device to have battery power.

I don't see a massive benefit of the simpler implementation (which
AIUI is all that anyone has really proposed at present) - though that
said it might be popular and handy, as people could notionally
dispense with carrying around a wallet/purse.

The latter implementation could lead to some innovative services, but
it could also just be a solution in search of a problem. It could also
get horrendously complicated, thus breaking that rather sensible rule
- keep it simple!

Grit in the Oyster
 

Roland Perry wrote:
In message .com, at
09:28:10 on Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Mizter T remarked:
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.

I do see a troublesome few years ahead. Having finally got out of the
woods with every store trying to thrust loyalty cards at you (I'm sure
the schemes still exist, but most seem to have stopped actively
recruiting new shoppers), we'll soon have a wallet full of one-purpose
rfid cards.

They are converting the Amsterdam public transport to some sort of
Oyster-like system quite soon now. So less moaning about the problems of
finding a ticket machine there that'll take credit cards, but it's one
more bit of dedicated plastic to carry everywhere

Though presumably that is the card that will - in theory - one day -
work on almost all public transport in the Netherlands (not sure about NS)?

(and to add to the
Brussels metro carnet card, the Oyster, my Nottingham City transport bus
pass, at least one door key, and who knows what else). And not just
that, but each of those (apart from the door key) has its own billing
system, or its own bit of prepay cash sitting in limbo.

They say all the ATOC cards [or is it phones] are going to be compatible
with each other, but I wouldn't take bets on it.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

Grit in the Oyster
 

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 19:59:37 on Fri, 3 Aug
2007, tim..... remarked:
They say all the ATOC cards [or is it phones] are going to be compatible
with each other, but I wouldn't take bets on it.

Being technically compatible and using the same stored
value may not be the same thing :-(

That's a whole new can of worms, but are you suggesting one smartcard
could have the stored value from dozens of different TOCs upon it (and

No, just that one TOCs card would be useless at a different TOC
even though they were technically compatable, unless the issue of
funds sharing is resolved.

tim

Grit in the Oyster
 

Bob wrote:
http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/...9168037,00.htm

Of course this will mean the need for cyber gripping.

Interesting, in my experience of "ITSO-compatible" cards on buses in
Bradford, York (First) & Edinburgh (Lothian) is that they are
significantly slower and an inferior technology to Oyster.

Grit in the Oyster
 

On Fri, 3 Aug 2007 22:26:38 +0100, "tim....."
wrote:


"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 19:59:37 on Fri, 3 Aug
2007, tim..... remarked:
They say all the ATOC cards [or is it phones] are going to be compatible
with each other, but I wouldn't take bets on it.

Being technically compatible and using the same stored
value may not be the same thing :-(

That's a whole new can of worms, but are you suggesting one smartcard
could have the stored value from dozens of different TOCs upon it (and

No, just that one TOCs card would be useless at a different TOC
even though they were technically compatable, unless the issue of
funds sharing is resolved.

Eh? Surely you put cash on the card and it's irrelevant who added it or
who deducts it provided there are systems to reconcile the card and
distribute the payments due against travel undertaken?

I'm not terribly au fait with ITSO but I thought the whole point of it
was that any suitable technically compliant card could hold / recognise
the ITSO specification and associated "product profiles" for each TOC
and then deduct the most appropriate fare for the journey being
undertaken (given times, dates, origin / destination etc). Provided
readers in ticket machines, hand held devices and gates / validators
were all to the ITSO spec then they can read and write to any ITSO
compatible card.

I personally think the article that launched this thread is a load of
old fluff. Yes it's lovely to be oh so radical and different but the
TOCs have franchises commitments to get these schemes in and I can't see
anything other than a basic plain vanilla card / gate / validator / hand
held unit scheme being feasible within those timescales. You need
commonality and familiarity to get these schemes accepted by the public
and whether people like it or not Oyster is currently the most
"familiar" of any such product to most UK travellers. I would also
expect DfT to get a bit "concerned" if the TOCs were each heading off in
20 directions in their particular schemes to achieve smartcard
ticketing. Whatever South West Trains do by 2009 will be what sets the
benchmark for every other TOC.

You might get to mobile phone acceptance in due course but not as the
first step and certainly not with anything like bar code readers. FTR in
York put paid to that concept.

--
Paul C

Grit in the Oyster
 

DfT has mandated the ITSO standard for all TOC smartcard systems so
compatibility should be ensured. However, note that the primary
intention of ITSO is that you buy a ticket and load it onto your
smartcard before travelling (although the loading could, conceivably,
be done via the gateline card reader).

ITSO is not really intended for stored value from which the cost of
your journey is deducted, although it may appear for limited,
localised applications. First of all, it would require a third party
bank to administer any scheme (despite what non-lawyer above said - if
he's got a way round the legal situation he could make himself a
fortune), and each TOC would need to agree to accept that bank's
stored value. Secondly, trying to work out the correct fare for your
PAYG journey is difficult enough on London Underground, with a fairly
simple route and fares structure, never mind on National Rail with its
mass of different routes and fares. (If you want to know what I mean,
take a journey from Gunnersbury to Hanger Lane via Turnham Green,
Ealing Broadway, and North Acton. You won't have stepped outside zone
3 but just see what fare you get charged.)

Grit in the Oyster
 

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

Aren't Japan and/or Finland already employing such a technology with mobile
phones?

Grit in the Oyster
 

"W14_Fishbourne" wrote in message
ups.com...
Just to clarify, there are two separate technologies being mixed up
here.

The one that is already being used (eg on Chiltern) is for a bar code
to be sent to your mobile phone. This bar code will be read by a bar
code reader on the gateline or by a gripper with a hand-held bar code
reader. At the moment, for various reasons, this is really only
workable with pre-booked tickets so that, for example, if your battery
goes dead you are on a printed manifest that the on-train staff will
have.

I went to Birmingham and back on one of those tickets in February. I showed
the railway staff the ticket at Marylebone, but the gate staff looked
confused and appeared unsure on what to do. One of them eventually figured
out that you need a scanner to read this information, but they did not have
one to hand. So they sent somebody to get one, waving me through the gates
at the same time.

The conductor on the train to Birmingham had to attempt several reads on my
mobile with his scanner before getting the all clear, while the conductor
back to London simply looked at the text message and gave a nod.

Back in London, they also needed some time to figure out what to do before
actually coming up with a scanner.