German Railway Testing NFC Enabled Mobile Tickets

An expanded trial of mobile ticketing - this time using NFC enabled mobile phones - has been announced by a railway operator in the German federal state of Hesse. The trial is being organised by the public transport authority of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main region (RMV), T-Systems, Nokia and Venyon.

RMV originally introduced its mobile ticketing scheme in 2006, and the enhanced tickets will now be stored in the embedded secure element of the NFC- enabled mobile phone, and can be inspected just by holding the device close to the inspectorÃ's reading device, which checks the validity of the ticket. This takes only a few milliseconds without any further interaction from the customer.

The rail firm also said that it will be possible to store the ticket in the SIM card of the mobile phone, and then the ticket will be removable and re-usable in case the customer switches to another NFC enabled mobile phone.

The new RMV mobile NFC ticketing solution is based on the German-wide e-ticket standard (VDV), to be used with NFC-enabled mobile phones. Thus the tickets in mobile phones and in plastic smart cards can be inspected by the same inspecting device and the ticketing systems aligned with VDV standard allow buying tickets also in other regions in Germany. The same consistent user experience applies to the public transportation in all participating cities in Germany, which brings significant benefits for travellers who frequently use public transportation in different cities.

The mobile NFC ticketing now introduced in Frankfurt is based on the common NFC standards and enables wider selection of tickets, like single tickets, daily tickets and monthly tickets for the RMV transport network. Based on NFC standards, the new Nokia 6212 classic as well as the Nokia 6131 NFC can be used for mobile ticketing in this project. At the same time with NFC mobile ticketing, RMV will enlarge the availability of so called ConTags, smart tags, which are installed at bus and train stops in Frankfurt. Soon the ConTags will cover all the bus and train stops of all the remaining eleven cities in RMV service area. Touching ConTags with NFC phone enables quick ticket purchases, online time schedules, journey planners and news services. Customers can retrieve information on departure times, possible delays or special schedules real-time just by touching the ConTag at the station with their NFC phones.

Venyon is a global mobile service company which develops and operates a secure and versatile service platform to provision and manage over the air (OTA) consumer applications, such as transport tickets or credit cards on consumersÃ' NFC enabled mobile devices. As a Trusted Service Manager (TSM) Venyon provides over the air (OTA) services to RMV in order to enable the customers from all the mobile network operators to be able to join the pilot.

The new phase for RMV mobile ticketing has been developed by T-Systems in co-operation with T-Laboratories and Deutsche Telekom. This new ticketing solution fulfils all the current requirements and security standards set by public transit authorities as well as mobile network operators.

Posted to the site on 13th June 2008