Mobile Ecosystem & TheBestAvise – Interviews, News and more …
Posts tagged London
6 months ago
TfL has agreed to relax its transaction speed requirements to allow payments on London’s bus and underground network to be made via NFC phones and contactless cards from next year — and expects faster NFC phones and contactless cards to arrive in the near future.
Transport for London (TfL) has stated it will support NFC payments on mobile phones in 2012. TfL is now in the process of deploying new contactless card readers on London’s tube and bus network. This will enable users of contactless EMV credit and debit cards and NFC mobile phones to ‘swipe and go’ on the London Underground and associated services.
Brian Dobson, manager of technology and systems for TfL’s Future Ticketing Project — established two years ago to look at life post-Oyster — told NFC World: “We are now in a position to say that if people come along with a contactless credit or debit card application on their mobile, we can accept it as an NFC payment in 2012. NFC will work on our new systems from the time that we are able to accept contactless cards.”
New, up-to-date contactless card readers that will allow EMV contactless card users and NFC phone owners with NFC operating in card emulation mode will be available on the London Underground from next year. The technology roll-out will be completed during 2013. However, the speed that transactions are able to take place using both EMV contactless cards and NFC has been a point of contention for TfL. The organisation has stringent speed requirements in order to keep congestion at stations low during peak times.
Oyster cards, which were upgraded to use the more secure Mifare Desfire chip several years ago, are able to complete a transaction in 300 to 350 milliseconds. The added encryption-based security of the Desfire card means each transaction takes a little longer than with the original Mifare Classic card. “We expect that the embedded secure element will enable faster transaction times than having a secure element in the SIM.” TfL has set a minimum speed requirement of 350ms for high volume use, yet current contactless EMV card technology, with its even higher security, transacts much more slowly at around 500ms. In response to this, TfL has made its requirements known to card companies, who have provided samples of future cards expected to arrive between 2012 and 2014 that will achieve transaction times of between 300 and 350ms.
In the meantime, Dobson says that the half-second transaction speed of cards being distributed by financial institutions now (with each card having a three year life) is “acceptable for low volume use.” By the time these cards are replaced with faster cards, TfL’s entire roll-out of card readers will be in place and ready to accept broader usage, he says. “Our initial infrastructure roll-out in 2012 and 2013 will support current contactless cards, as the UK banks have already issued them,” says Dobson. “500ms is acceptable for a low volume of users, but to get faster, high volume use, we need faster cards.
“We are cautiously stepping forward; our roll-out plan complements Oyster very well. It’s not about a big bang, but working steadily to ensure everything goes smoothly.” While TfL cannot say how fast future NFC mobile devices will be able to transact, Dobson says he has been assured by NFC proponents that he “will be pleasantly surprised.”
He adds: “Some people are likely to use an embedded secure NFC element, while others will use SIM security. We expect that the embedded secure element will enable faster transaction times than having a secure element in the SIM.” Contactless card payments and NFC are a step forward for TfL, reducing complexity of managing payments and increasing security for end users.
Dobson explains: “Oyster is complex; all the travel information is held on the card, so throughout a day of travel costs need to be added and discounted every time a user passes through a station. Contactless EMV cards don’t need to store any complex information as you travel, as everything goes through to the back office, which removes the complexity by providing policy changes in one place at the end of the day, rather than thousands of calculations. “[This] takes us into the security standards of the financial services industry, rather than those of the transport industry.”
“Also, our strategy to move to contactless EMV card payments and NFC mobile payments takes us into the security standards of the financial services industry, rather than those of the transport industry. We will use their technology, taking the burden off of us while ensuring the highest security levels for our customers,” he says.
Stage one of the roll-out began with London’s 8,000 buses one month ago, starting with a “SIM element” that will allow 3G over-the-air communication between the bus and the back office; at the moment, bus drivers have to manually remove a data cartridge from the bus ticketing system at the end of their shift and load the data onto the back office system at the bus depot. The bus SIM element aspect of the programme will be completed by the end of this year, and the process to replace the current Oyster card readers on buses will begin in early 2012, with the system up and running in the first quarter.
Following the bus deployment, TfL will begin the complicated task of replacing the 20,000 Oyster contactless card readers that have been in operation on the London Underground since 2002. TfL carried out NFC mobile payments trials in 2008 with O2, Visa and Barclaycard.
Dobson states the trial went very well, but a lack of mobile devices in the marketplace meant TfL had to wait for the market to catch up with its interest in innovating the UK travel industry.
Source: http://www.nearfieldcommunicationsworld.com
Nokia: NFC oyster payments mainstream by 2012
2 years ago
Nokia is pushing for NFC (Near field communication) tech inside mobiles, hard. It wants to get you casually swiping your handset over a payment point, Oyster card style, to wirelessly pay for train trips, snacks and more, and now it says the kit will be standard by as soon as 2012.
Nokia needs to up its game in a big way next year, but one tech area it’s good to see Espoo leading the way in is mobile NFC tech, so you can use your phone as a wallet to buy small items quickly and easily. We’ve seen it built into Nokia handsets like the 6216 Classic, and it’s a major feature of the new Symbian, but now the Finnish phone giant is talking roll out times.
Symbian getting Oyster tech built in!
As part of that roll out, Nokia will launch the kit across a range of its phones as soon as next year, a source told the publication. “In Q3 and Q4 of next year we will see Nokia going into NFC in a big way. They will be bringing forward a lot of phones with embedded NFC,” the source claimed.
This is the first we’ve heard about a timeline for Nokia’s NFC kit shipping across its whole line, but with a new look Symbian promised for around the same time, we’re hopeful it’s the start of a resurgence for the company, design wise.
According to a report in Mobile Magazine:
Nokia Industry Collaborations VP Mark Selby told Mobile: “Nokia is anticipating multiple NFC-enabled devices, which won’t all be at the high end of the market. Our plan is to see NFC in lots of devices, not just smartphones.”
Selby declined to say when or how many NFC devices Nokia plans to launch, but said he anticipated that UK consumers will be widely using NFC devices by 2012.
One source close to Nokia said: “In Q3 and Q4 of next year we will see Nokia going into NFC in a big way. They will be bringing forward a lot of phones with embedded NFC.”
London transit executives may head to New York to consult on subway
guardian.co.uk
The battle between two of the world's great urban train systems enters a new chapter
The perennial rivalry between two of the world's great underground railways, the New York subway and the London tube, has erupted once more after the subway announced that it plans to fly over Transport for London executives to advise it on how to modernise its systems.
The apparent admission of inferiority on the part of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority towards its equivalent public body across the pond has been greeted with predictable anguished cries. The New York Times carried the news under the headline Will Subway Riders Start Calling It the Tube?
Under the plan, pending MTA board approval at a meeting on Wednesday, some $500,000 (£350,000) would be spent jetting in senior Transport for London staff to act as consultants to the subway. They would be paid up to $200 an hour, have their travel and hotel expenses covered, and stay for two to four weeks at a stretch.
As an added twist, the plan is the brainchild of the subway's new chief, Jay Walder, who until 2006 worked for Transport for London. He took over as chairman of the MTA earlier this month, and brought with him from London Charles Monheim, his chief operating officer.
Together, they plan to introduce to New York some of the innovations that Walder has been credited with successfully implementing in London — notably the Oyster card automatic payment system, and electronic boards informing passengers how long they will have to wait for the next train. Studies have shown that riders are three times more anxious about waiting when they have no idea how long the delay will be.
In comparison with the tube, the New York network is starting to look distinctly antiquated: it long ago removed the graffiti that clung to its carriages, but it lacks the digital convenience that Londoners have come to expect. New York's attempts to introduce electronic boards have been beset with problems and currently only exists on one subway line and on bus stops in one midtown street.
A Transport for London spokesperson confirmed today that talks were under way: "We are in discussions with the MTA on a proposed cooperation agreement under which we might work together, at no cost to London's fare payers or taxpayers, on areas of mutual interest. We will ensure that this arrangement financially benefits London, as well as providing New York with the benefit of London's experience in Oyster technology and the provision of customer information. The details have yet to be finalised."
If this sounds like the ultimate victory for the London tube over the New York subway, think again.
Walder is himself a native of the New York borough of Queens, who cut his teeth on the subway and taught at Harvard before leaving America to become planning and finance director of Transport for London in 2000.
So it could be argued that it took an American to spruce up the London tube, and having taught the British how to do it he is now bringing the trophy back home. "This is truly a homecoming for me," he said recently.
"I'm a kid from Queens. I grew up riding the subway."
The two cities have certainly enjoyed an incestuous relationship in matters of mass transit over the last decade. In 2001, the then-London mayor, Ken Livingstone, invited Bob Kiley, a former US intelligence agent and a man credited with turning around the Boston and New York public transport systems, to come to London to work similar magic.
They memorably summed up their partnership as "a CIA activist working for an unreconstructed Trotskyite". However, Kiley's reign as London's transport chief was not always an easy one.
Despite sharing Livingstone's aversion to public-private partnerships and helping to push through the mayor's Congestion charge scheme and bus network expansion, Kiley eventually stepped down in November 2005 after the two clashed over a member of staff that he wanted removed but whom the mayor wanted to keep.
The latest partnership, however, suggests the transatlantic transport relationship is still on track.
London Travelwatch, which represents the interests of transport users in and around the capital, welcomed the news yesterday.
"We think that sharing knowledge from around the world is quite a good thing," said a spokeswoman. "Every big public transport system has its good and bad points and London's is much bigger and busier than most. Let's hope they'll also bring the best of the New York subway system back here so that the London Underground can be improved, too."
Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, said he was "delighted that the city of my birth recognises that it has things to learn from London". He added: "Talks are underway, and this could potentially be another example of our great cities working together for mutual benefit."
