Trial Run of NFC Technology with Nokia Mobile Phone in UK Region

O2 and Nokia get ready to roll out the trial run for NFC (Near Field Communication) technology embedded in the mobile phones for UK region. NFC is a new short range communication technology that enables fast data exchange securely and wirelessly. By integrating this new technology into mobile phones, customers can simply wave or touch their mobile phones near the reader for access to the public transport, make payment electronically and even figure out the nearest location of the retailers for shopping conveniences.

As compared to Bluetooth technology, NFC stands a great advantage in terms of fast setup time, in less than 0.1s time. This is extremely important as nobody wants to wait few seconds just to get an access to the train, especially when they are rushing for time. By having this in place, mobile phone’s usage is no longer limited to voice, video communication or even PDA function. Just imagine now you can throw away your wallet, credit card and identification card when all these can be incorporated into single mobile device. However, before it can be truly useful, there is a huge effort to pull in all the eco-partners for actual implementation.

The trial run will be carried in various cities in UK from today for a period of six months. With the involvement of 500 trialists, there should be able to gather sufficient real life user’s experience for further improvement before the actual roll out in the future. NFC trial is also going on in Singapore jointly offered by mobile service provider StarHub and EZ-Link, a e-wallet pulse service using smartcard.