Near-field communication gets nearer

Host City evaluates advances in ticketing technology and speaks to leaders in the field

Consider this shocking revelation from an international survey recently conducted by a manufacturer of mobile phones: many people say they would rather take their mobile phone with them than their partner for a long weekend away. Here’s another one: in many places – such as Hong Kong and most western European nations – there are more mobile phones than there are people.

With many fans arriving at the same time, gaining access
to a venue can be a slow and frustrating process

Mobile phones clearly play a crucial and growing role in our daily existence. The fact that they are so indispensable makes them ideal tools for all kinds of actions that are peripheral to their primary use as communication devices. Using them to grant access to venues is one such action.

Problems with printed tickets
With thousands of fans trying to access a venue just before kick-off, nothing is more frustrating than waiting in line before being able to enter the venue. Having somebody in front of you who is having trouble with his ticket does not make life any easier – neither does finding out that your “cheap deal” turns out to be a forgery, meaning that you miss out on the match.

Printed tickets must be checked by stewards or read by special readers. Despite the best of intentions, this is usually a time-consuming process. Printed tickets – even the highest quality versions available nowadays – can still be forged. It requires highly sophisticated equipment to recognise fake tickets – equipment that is normally only available at the stadium, making it difficult for fans to find out in advance whether their ticket is genuine.

Sophisticated access technology
Stadium managers and providers of access control equipment are improving the speed at which fans can access a venue. “The latest systems take less than five seconds per person to enable access to the stadium,” Sidney Sacks of Turnstar System says.

Some airlines have already been operating a system for many years that sends a unique code to a mobile phone. But this technique is not suitable for major venues where thousands of people turn up at the same time.

Here, a more sophisticated and faster system is essential. The latest developments use coded pictures that can either be printed or sent to a mobile phone. The print-out or the mobile phone then needs to be swiped or held in front of a special reader at the turnstile. The code stores all the relevant information, including access gate, seat row and seat number.

An added dimension
One-dimensional barcodes are now obsolete for access control at venues, as they only allow up to 40 characters to be stored. This is not enough to store the diversity of data needed to access a major sporting venue. Instead, two-dimensional matrix codes can store several hundred characters and have become much more popular. These 2D codes can also be read in any orientation, which allows the ticket holder to gain access much faster than usual.

Coded pictures on mobile phones have an added advantage over printed versions, in that these tickets cannot be shared or bought by anybody other than the original purchaser. They are restricted to the owner of the mobile phone. Forwarding the picture would be pointless, as the ticket would then become invalid.

The potential for counterfeiting is also low. Techniques to abuse the system by sending fake access codes to mobile phones are simply too expensive.

Never a perfect solution
Although the technology sounds promising, use of coded pictures on mobile phones also has its limitations. The most obvious problem, without an obvious solution, is that mobile phone batteries can run out of charge on the way to the venue. Fans facing this problem can still get access by reporting themselves to a customer-service desk in or near the venue, or produce a printed version of the ticket which is often sent via e-mail as a confirmation.

The biggest limitation is the technology used. 2D matrix coded pictures can only be used on WAP or MMS-enabled mobile phones. To avoid such problems, owners of American baseball venues ask ticket-buyers to provide details about the brand, type and model of their mobile phone. Buyers also have to provide information about their provider in order to be sure they will be able to receive their ticket in the right format.

“In the US, baseball fans are accustomed to print-at-home tickets scanned by a hand-held scanner at the stadium,” says Ian McCready, CEO of Mobiqa, a provider of mobile ticketing solutions. He says this has made introducing the system in stadiums in the US less problematic than elsewhere in the world.

But perhaps the biggest reason why the technology has not been implemented extensively yet is the fact that developments go so fast that technology is outdated very soon after its introduction. This makes implementing new systems a costly process. It is almost impossible to introduce a system which is suitable for every visitor.

Near-field communication
The days of technical issues hampering the introduction of mobile tickets might soon to be over. “The ticket market will not only undergo structural changes worldwide, but will also develop quickly in terms of technology,” says George Egloff, CEO of Swiss-based company Ticketcorner.

Mobile phone manufacturers are currently busy developing near-field communication (NFC) technology. These systems, based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and the NFC short range wireless connectivity interface and protocol, include a small chip that communicates and allows for interactivity over a short distance.

While the technology can be compared to the widely used Bluetooth standard, the range of NFC smart tags is only about ten centimetres. Bluetooth technology can be faster, but near-field technology has clear advantages – not least allowing tickets to be purchased without having to visit a ticket office, or even a website, to purchase a (digital) ticket.

Tickets can be transferred simply by holding one device close to another. Egloff says: “Tickets would then be able to be bought by holding the mobile phone at hand’s width from a billboard or kiosk advertising. It will allow for purchasing more information or services the same way.”

On arrival at the venue, there is an added benefit of being able to read the technology from a small distance. This makes it easier for digital tickets to be read.

It is not yet known when – or indeed if – the new technology will become the standard. One problem is absence of internationally accepted standards. A spokesman for mobile phone manufacturer Nokia says: “NFC-enabled mobile phones are already available but the main question is when the system will be standardised and certified.”

Several successful trials have been conducted all around the world. But the question still remains of when exactly the technique will be introduced for obtaining tickets to venues. It will take investments – both from the stadium management to implement reader capacity, as well as from mobile phone manufacturers to provide mobile phones with NFC capabilities. “It is all about making the option available,” Ian McCready of Mobiqa says.

Nokia expects that by 2012, only 20 per cent of mobile phones will be NFC-enabled. This means that the technology could only be widely introduced in the far future. That is, of course, unless new developments will overtake the technology, making even NFC obsolete.