Near Field Communication development in France

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Matthieu Desiderio

Near Field Communication or NFC is a technology that has a great potential when associated with cellphones… In Asia, many transit systems adopted this technology and implemented it to ease the access to services related to transit trips, and mostly to intermodal transit trips. The last European Congress on Mobility, held early June in Paris, addressed this issue in an important debate.

French transit authorities (Autorités Organisatrices de Transport, AOT) could benefit from the development of such a technology, that could drastically improve ratemaking and ticketing, but also travelers information (for multimodal trips for example).

Groupe Ulysse: gathering phone operators and transit authorities to develop NFC technology

Both the French cellphone & network operators and transit authorities created “Groupe Ulysse” and are working on the technical and organisational standards to implement and deploy ticketing technology through NFC-capable cellphones.

Also, the banking sector created “Groupe Pegasus” to develop NFC applications allowing contactless payment systems, that could also be used in transit systems, associated to the ticketing systems that “Groupe Ulysse” is working on.

The Government officials point of view

Local Government officials, involved in public transportation, definitely want to be part of the research and development process of this new technology. Wishing to see these new systems operated within their transit networks, they also need to make sure that these new tools are in line with transit authorities and riders needs, especially on the financial side.

The Groupement des Autorités Régulatrice de Transport (GART), French association gathering most of the transit authorities operating transport systems in France has thus created a NFC Task Force. The Groupe de Travail NFC will work in collaboration with cellphone & network operators, and transit operators, to implement an operational systems that fits with their needs and expectations. The first step will be to define which services will/could be covered by this new technology, and then to take into account all economical and regulatory factors to set this up.

We now have to wait for the results of the first analysis by the NFC Task Force, and hope to have a first experimentation in the near future. According to the GART officials, this reflexion phase is needed since public transport in France (as is in other countries) involves many actors that need to be coordinated to ensure the development of a nationwide integrated technology.

References

Article: Les autorités organisatrices de transport s’engagent pour offrir des services adaptés à la clientèle, GART Mobilités N°90, Jun. 13, 2008: here
Article: Cell phones eliminate paper tickets, Blog NFC, Mar. 5 2008: here
Website: Groupe Ulysse (standards and specifications): here
Website: Groupe Pegasus – Payez Mobile: here

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