EU wants RFID chips for its postal services
Brussels wants RFID Frites
THE EU MEMBER STATES often have a hard time agreeing on stuff, but one thing they are all unanimous about (yes, even Ireland) is the importance of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips. Especially when it comes to the postal service.
By 2013 the EU will supposedly have a fully liberalised postal system, having hopefully abolished all the culturally charming yet archaic and inefficient national monopolies. This means the postal market will soon be overrun with companies promising to get your mail to its destination faster and for less stamp duty than ever. Which is nice, but mo’ postal services, mo’ problems, as they say, and mail could well end up getting very lost. This is where RFID comes into play.
RFID chips have already been tried and tested by postal service in about 50 countries worldwide and, surprise, surprise, have been found to work rather well. Akhilesh Mathur of the UN’s Universal Postal Union (UPU), told Euractive that "as costs drop and tags become smaller, RFID could be used for item-level tracking".
If RFID tracking was actually deployed properly, it would probably mean mail would never get lost ever again, something which sounds far too efficient for EU standards, to be honest, but fingers crossed.
Of course, the idea would only really be plausible if the chips were cheap enough and small enough to make the idea practical in the first place. Apparently both Hitachi and Motorola are currently hard at work trying to cut the chips down to size. Some tech-sperts even believe that new development could lead to such miniscule sizes that the term "smart dust" would actually be more appropriate than “chips”.
But of course another key factor in whether or not RFID could be used to better the efficiency of the postal service is interoperability, which by all measures, still seems a little way off. The European commission swears blue in the face that it’ll have a global RFID standard ready by sometime in 2010, but that probably means 2013 at the earliest. But when it happens, boy are we in for a treat(y). µ
L’Inq
Euractive
Comments
"smart dust"_ I don't like that.
I fancy: "Euro Franking Flakes""They're Gonna Post Great!"
"Frosties" bring to meme tragedy, and most people dislike memes, because they don't speak to anything noteworthy.
Now "Post Shreddies" or "Postal Shreddies"__ No, that puts me in mind of airmailing nanna's pants...
Oh, how is "Franking Reflexes". Not very on spot. Errr.. "microtots"? No too volistic. Frak. I'm sure they'll coin something.
Dubious future
I'm told in practise there is only interest in competing for business-mail, and packages, but not for regular person to person mail, because it's just too costly to set up and pay personal to deliver and pick up individual letters (not to mention setting up a sales system for the stamps).Incidentally, if mail is privatised what the hell does the EU have to do with them using or not using RFID for internal routing?
it's the fish, not the chips
RFID tags come in cheap enough today that they should not be the issue here. What is - I would imagine - is the environment: readers along the entire logistics and mail handling chain, as well as the computing infrastructure that they come with. After all, you don't want to go looking for a parcel in the (football field sized) distribution center with a handheld RFID scanner, right? Instead, you want to just check a tracking tool and find that the parcel is sitting in the temporary hold between station KF236 and KY238. For that to happen, you need a hellofalotof equipment installed. And in every EU country, that is.Interoperability
Registered letters bear a bar code, a very new technology just invented this year, for tracking purpose.International register letters sent from Germany to France for instance bear a German bar code. As the French and German systems are incompatible, the French Post Office affixes a (different) French bar code on the German letter.
It is understandable, as these countries are on different continents, never speak together, and there is no Universal Postal Union body that could promote standards among its members.
So, for RFID, what is your bet ? 2021 ?
but i didnt receive your bill
i have often thought in the past that eventually all your utility bills will come with rfid so that when they phone you to find out why you have not payed your bill and you say "bill? i have not received any bill." they can then reply by saying "yes you did, its in your kitchen drawer......