Buy your bus tickets using your phone

THE DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT has now completed its first live mobile ticketing trial for buses using the ITSO smartcard standard mandated by the government.

This primary trail took place over a six-month period in the north west of England involving 36 passengers traveling using two bus operators. The tickets were paid for using a near-field communication (NFC) mobile phone.

In order to find out if this plan was to succeed two steps needed to be taken, firstly to see how feasible it was to use an NFC phone as an ITSO ticket carrier and secondly to work out if ITSO compliant products are actually able to be remotely loaded and validated on NFC enabled customer devices.

Although using this system would obviously make it quicker to buy a ticket, as this could be done remotely, the tests also demonstrated how it could save the transport companies money, as cheaper ticket inspection devices could be produced.

Elliott of Consult Hyperion who worked on the project said, "Bus operators do not believe that the benefits of using mobile technology for ticketing will be fed directly to them, but they can save on the cost of ticket inspectors and in the issuance of smartcards.”

Elliot continued to point out that there could also be problems faced in the roll-out of this scheme, as there is at present limited availability of NFC-enabled handsets in this country. Competition and friction between mobile operators and banks also has to be considered.

If all goes to plan, and this is seen as the ticket-purchase future, a final stage will need to be carried out, involving a second trial to prove that the test technology from the second stage is possible to use in a live environment. μ

L'Inq
Computing