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The NFC Forum trade and standards group today announced several new members, including one of Canada’s largest mobile operators, Rogers Communications, and a chip maker for smartphones, Marvell Technology Group, as voting members.

The latest additions help make up for the recent loss to the forum’s membership rolls of France Telecom-Orange, one of Europe’s largest mobile operator groups and among the most committed telcos to rolling out Near Field Communication services. Mobile operators are still scarce among the ranks of the forum’s roughly 140 members.

Rogers, a GSM operator, has expressed interest in introducing NFC in Canada. It is also a partner with Canada’s two other major mobile telcos, Bell Mobility and Telus, in a joint venture to roll out mobile payment nationwide, especially peer-to-peer money transfers. But Rogers’ NFC plans are its own, not part of the venture, EnStream, said a source. EnStream is now testing its Zoompass payment service on contactless stickers. Rogers held its own NFC payment trial last year with the Royal Bank of Canada.

U.S.-based chip maker Marvell supplies chips for storage devices, smartphones, e-readers and other electronics. Among smartphone makers that have used Marvell’s chips are Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry. Marvell has also supplied WiFi chips for Apple’s iPhone.

Rogers and Marvell joined as principal members, one level below the top sponsor level, which includes the forum’s cofounders, NXP Semiconductors, Sony Corp., and Nokia. Both categories are allowed to vote on standards and other issues taken up by the trade group. Among the new nonvoting members is the technology standards arm of the giant U.S. retailer trade group, the National Retail Federation.

Orange had earlier been a principal member of the forum, but downgraded to an associate member some time ago. It has decided more recently to drop out altogether, probably over a dispute that flared up last year between the forum and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute over an ETSI standard that supports the SIM card as the predominant secure element for NFC applications.

Orange along with its ally in the dispute, smart card vendor Gemalto, had wanted the forum to adopt the same standard as ETSI had earlier approved, called the host-controller interface. The forum, last August, voted in an alternative pushed by Nokia. Gemalto continues as an associate member of the forum, however.

Orange’s defection follows an earlier decision by big mobile operator group Vodafone to bow out of the forum.

Koichi Tagawa, NFC Forum chairman and general manager of Sony’s global standards and industry relations department, acknowledged today during a panel discussion at a conference in Tokyo that surveys among forum members showed their most pressing concern was improving relations with mobile operators.

At present, the only mobile operator in the ranks of sponsor members–and paying the hefty $50,000 annual fee–is Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo. And only three others, AT&T of the U.S., KDDI of Japan and now Rogers of Canada, are principal members. A few other telcos, such as Sprint of the U.S. and South Korea’s SK Telecom, are nonvoting associate members.

The forum announced 19 new members in all during its quarterly meeting being held this week in Shanghai. The new additions include 17 associate, implementer and nonprofit members. Among the the new nonprofit members is the retail federation.