HEADLINE NEWS
Germany: Three Telcos Join National Railway In Touch&Travel Project
Germany’s national railway, Deutsche Bahn along with telco Vodafone Germany launched the Touch&Travel trial in early 2008 with 200 users for travel between the cities of Berlin and Hanover and also within the Berlin and nearby Potsdam. They used a SIM-based ticketing application but also had to carry conventional paper tickets during the first phase. That ended in December 2008, and with the second phase, a total 500 trial participants use purely electronic tickets on the SIM card in aging Motorola NFC phones. Germany's two other major telcos joined during the second phase, T-Mobile and Telefónica O2 Germany. Organizers also expanded the trial to include other modes of mass transit in Berlin. The project enables users to tap their phones on “touchpoints” embedded with NFC chip-tags at train, metro and ferry stations, and bus stops, then tap out at the other end of their journey. The system is designed to automatically calculates their fare and bill the customer. It could debit a preregistered bank account, for example.
Organizers have a goal of expanding the trial to 3,000 users, but are having problems getting phones that support the ticketing application on the SIM card using the single-wire protocol standard. They had hoped to use the SWP-enabled Nokia 6216. But the phone, promised by Nokia in Q3 of 2009, is late to market. Deutsche Bahn also intends to expand to other cities and routes in Germany. In general, the lack of gates at either national or local train or metro stations in Germany is suited for the system of tags and automatic downloads of tickets. Frankfurt-regional transit authority RMV is using a similar system, but unlike RMV’s “HandyTicket,” Deutsche Bahn’s “Touch&Travel,” stores its application and tickets on a secure chip in the SIM. This enables users to download higher-value tickets and for roving conductors to tap the phones of passengers with their own NFC handsets to check tickets.
* Trusted Service Manager: Defined loosely to include companies or other organizations securely distributing, provisioning and managing applications, generally over the air, on secure elements in NFC mobile phones; or licensing their platforms for this purpose.
N/A: Not available or not applicable.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedInSyndicate
