Views on NFC

Christian Estrosi – Formerly minister of Industry (2009-2010)

“Contactless mobile technology is no longer science-fiction. French industrials have fully understood this and are investing massively in NFC. My objective is for France to become the leader in contactless mobile technology in the coming months. Our country is an example to the rest of Europe, let’s all bear that in mind and maintain our position as leader”.

Jean-Michel Gadrat - mobile contactless services Forum

“Contactless mobile technology now represents several thousands of jobs in France”

“Together, we are building an open and high performance ecosystem for tomorrow”.

“A new economic model is emerging, representing several billion Euros across the world”.

“The Forum exists so that all together, we can make things possible in life with just a single operation”.

Roland Ries – President of the GART (French association of public transport authorities) and Senator-Mayor of Strasbourg.

“The public must be given the choice. We need to fully implement new business models and create a virtuous circle taking into account the level of service quality required by our customers, the costs borne by the transport authorities and the transport operators. It is time to work on establishing a world standard for NFC ticketing systems. We need to seize this opportunity, otherwise others will do it before us”.

Pierre Hérisson – President of the Postal and Electronic Communications Commission and Senator of Haute-Savoie.

“Contactless technology is the essential issue of the decade. Local authorities and the State have a major role to play in providing support for the deployment of standardized NFC technologies that are made available to the largest number of people”.
“The mobile contactless services Forum needs to sweep aside any remaining reluctance and work alongside council members whose aim is to ensure that their region is as competitive as possible”.

Pierre Louette – Secretary General at France Telecom-Orange

“NFC makes moving around a town a more pleasant and smooth experience. The new ecosystem offered by contactless mobile technology is going to turn us all into digital immigrants. The services are easy to adapt to and quickly become part of everyday life”.

Florence Barale – Local councillor in the city of Nice in charge of the “Nice, contactless mobile city” project.

“The Nice project is the result of several elements which are essential for success: interoperability between services and technologies, the involvement of local authorities and their desire to provide their regions with the kind of attractive services that are becoming an essential part of the everyday life of our citizens”.

Pascale Avarguès – CIO in the city of Bordeaux.

“The city is becoming a major platform for innovations for citizens to benefit from. Mobile and portable services are the top priority for local councillors. Contactless technology offers us a wide range of possibilities to succeed in meeting our objectives”.

Josette Travert – Deputy-Mayor of Caen, Vice-President of the University of Caen - Lower Normandy

“It is important to choose the right degree of public acceptability with regard to contactless services. Finding the optimal use value is the key to success”.
“The most important thing is for local authorities to work together to share and learn from past experience”.

Charlotte Desbons - Visa Europe

“The partnership with retail associations is essential for contactless payment systems to be successful”.

“When deploying contactless systems, one of the fundamental steps consists of providing merchants with compatible payment terminals. Part of the preparation work in Nice involved designing a communication kit, which was sent out to the merchants showing them how simple contactless payments can be and the advantages of such a system. The success of the Nice project is also mainly due to the excellent partnership that was set up between the retail associations and the City”.

Didier Durand - Orange

“For us, 2011 is the year for roll-out of contactless mobile technology on a national scale”.

“In 2011, we will be ordering several hundred thousand Cityzi mobile phones, which will be made gradually available in Orange stores. In Nice, the Samsung Player One is already on the shelves, a Sagem mobile will soon be on offer and other models are on the way”.

DURAND Directeur du projet Sans Contact, Orange.

Joël Eppe- Sncf proximités

Over 10 years ago, SNCF Proximités launched a huge programme functioning alongside the traditional paper ticket and consisting of contactless electronic transport tickets (ticketing).
This meant that the majority of regional, Paris and suburb network tickets could be sold paperless and be loaded onto a contactless smartcard.

Within a few years, NFC technology has progressed from being a technology with a promising future to being very much today’s technology. The SNCF is a pioneer in this domain, starting back in 2006 with its first experimental project launched in the Ile de France region in partnership with the RATP and Orange.
46 testers used a Siemens prototype to test loading tickets using their mobile and validating them when passing through access control points.

Another experiment in the Ile-de-France region was also carried out in 2006, in partnership with the mobile operator Bouygues Télécom. This experimental project with the same scope involved 60 testers equipped with a NEC prototype, which they used to test interoperability between mobile network operators.

These technical experiments proved to be highly successful with the testers, with a satisfaction rate of over 80%.

At the end of 2007, a final experiment in the Brittany region provided the opportunity to further identify customer expectations. The testers were given a Sagem My700x contactless mobile phone, which they used to load their travel tickets and carry out a genuine remote payment transaction. They then validated their tickets on the TER network in the Brittany region, on the Illenoo network in the Ille-et-Villaine region and on the STAR network in the city of Rennes. They also had their ticket checked. At the same time, the experiment enabled travellers to use their telephones for other services such as access to EFFIA car parks or information requests using the NFC tags provided in different places. The feedback was extremely valuable and confirmed the customer potential as well as identifying possible obstacles to be faced by NFC mobile phone technology.

Since these promising tests took place, SNCF Proximités via its subsidiary RITMx is now capable of handling new ticketing media including the arrival of NFC mobile phones..

Joël EPPE
SNCF PROXIMITES
Director of the Innovation and Technology Centre

Yannick Laurens - Ligne Azur- Veolia transport

“On the 21st of May, Nice became the first European city to deploy contactless mobile payment services. In practical terms, what difference will this make to the lives of people in Nice?"

Yannick Laurens, Deputy Regional Director - Veolia Transport Méditerranée:

The aim of the “Nice, contactless City” project is to create a package of innovative services based on a new generation of NFC (*) mobile phones. For this project to be made possible, the partnership set up between the Urban Community of Nice Côte d'Azur (NCA) and several industrialists and service providers had to be perfect. The local council, ST2N/ Veolia Transport, banks, mobile telephone operators, the retail sector, museums, industrialists and the university all came together to create a service package available on NFC mobile phones.
May 21st 2010 was the inauguration day. Along with a crowd of journalists and managers (including Cyrille du Peloux), Mr. Estrosi, Minister of Industry and Mayor of Nice went on a visit around the city to discover and use the services already available. With his mobile phone he paid for a cup of coffee and purchased a ticket on the tramway (it was even checked, in line with the rules and regulations!). He checked out the time of the next tram and browsed through several content pages providing practical and cultural information at the Modern Art Museum and in the street.

Will “BPass Lignes d'Azur” revolutionize the way we use public transport ?

Yannick Laurens :

We think it will! It’s now possible for anybody to use a mobile phone to purchase a travel ticket where and when he wants and access content relating to mobility. So it does provide a concrete contribution to making public transport a simpler and more attractive solution.
We are proud that ST2N, with the technical assistance of Veolia Transport teams, was at the heart of this initiative, which has succeeded in attracting attention across the world. It’s important to remember that this adventure began back in 2005 with the first mobile NFC ticketing service experiment.
On May 21st we achieved two victories: the first one is that we turned Veolia Transport’s project into an industrial reality and established “BPass Lignes d’Azur” as a key part of the service package offered to people living in Nice. The second victory is to see how satisfied people were with the way we organized it all.