LONDON — StoLPaN, the pan-European consortium driving the adoption of Near Field Communications (NFC), will conduct its first public trial of the technology in the Dolomite skiing resorts of North East Italy.
Use cases being trialled include delivery of up-to-date ski and weather reports to phones when devices are waved past NFC-enabled active posters, and integration of NFC with SMS and barcode-based infrastructures in bars, restaurants and shops to offer customer loyalty schemes.
For example a coupon picked up from a smart poster offering discounts at a local restaurant, might be redeemed through the NFC phone using a SMS or barcode system later that evening.
The 'Store Logistics and Payment with NFC' (StoLPaN) project, which is co-funded by the European Union's Information Society Technology (IST) program, aims to define open commercial and technical frameworks for NFC-enabled services on mobile devices. As well as numerous academic research institutions, industry members include Motorola, NXP Semiconductors, Auto-ID-Lab St. Gallen, Bull, Deloitte, Sun Microsystems, and Ennova Research.
"Widespread adoption of NFC applications requires simplicity for users. Being able to integrate this exciting technology with existing contactless, Mifare and barcode environments is crucial to achieve this," commented Florent Frederix, Head of Sector RFID, Information Society and Media Directorate General, European Commission. "This first open interoperability trial will be a key milestone in positioning Europe as a globally competitive player in the NFC area."
The trial will be managed by Ennova Research, and relies on the support of Cattid of the University of Rome, the Regione Veneto local government and AFF Hungary.
It will feature different types of NFC-enabled phones, contactless point of sales terminals from Ingenico, NFC and MIFARE technology from NXP Semiconductors, the service platform from Ennova Research and security systems from the University of Technology of Graz, Austria.
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