Comments on: Near Field Communication and Travel

By: Glenn Gruber

Glenn Gruber — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:32:43 +0000

SR,

Thanks for the comment. I haven’t heard of any handset manufacturer using NFMIC.

Hope the article was helpful however.

Glenn

By: SR

SR — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:51:54 +0000

Hello Glenn,

Stumbled upon this article doing some other research. Specific to NFC range ability and the technology surrounding this do you know if any smartphones are implementing Near field magnetic induction communication (NFMIC)? I believe this is sometime referred to as far-field and I see some wiki posts mentioning it’s range ability to be of 22 meters at the carrier frequency of 13.56MHz.

thanks,

By: Will Google Wallet Revolutionize Payments in Travel? | Software Industry Insights

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:35:46 +0000

[...] maybe my perspective is skewed as I’m not a huge believer in NFC (a 10 year old technology) as a game changer. Please read the full article and please add your [...]

By: Norm Rose

Norm Rose — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:51:51 +0000

I agree with your general theme, NFC is not a panacea for all aspects of travel. It is more likely that government issued IDs will be used for security combined with facial recognition and/or iris scan. The use of NFC for boarding the aircraft still makes sense. Given the rapid pace of technology change and the time to market for NFC enabled phones to sufficiently saturate the market, you are probably right that this type of vision expressed in the iTravel patent is unlikely. I do see the mobile payments happening though as it is already has happened in many international markets.

By: DD

DD — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:54:45 +0000

I share your scepticism, and particularly the instructive failure of RFID to do anything much for travel.
It’s taken quite along time to move fully to bar codes for passenger processing and whilst they are just beginning to be used via mobile devices as well as on paper, there is solid benefit to paper.

It can be processed by the Mark 1 Human Eyeball (It might be the Mark 8 for all I know:-) ) People like to check seat/gate/time etc etc easily) AND the barcode can be processed electronically AND the battery never runs out AND it is much easier to access than fumbling for your phone and moving from the app you are in to the one with the barcode.
On top of that there is a tiny step in the process that a lot of airlines use that depends entirely on the human eyeball – that last final scan of your boarding pass by the nice cabin staff as you get on – just checking they don’t have any strays! Oh, and if you are one of the lucky few who turns left into the “posh” seats they often use the bit of paper to put with your jacket so you get the right one back.
Having just spent rather a lot of money moving from mag stripe reading to barcode reading I find it hard to imagine a cash-strapped aviation industry spending a whole load more to move to NFC??
NFC was demonstrated for travel like processes at an IBM event as long ago as 1998. I have a sneaking feeling we are still on the flat part of the hockey stick curve and it will be a while before it takes a sharp upward turn – if ever.