UK Department for Transport completes NFC bus ticketing trial
By Sarah Clark 
| nfcworld.com | January 27th, 2009
A small-scale test has taken place in the north-west of England which utilised mobile phones to buy bus tickets using NFC and the UK's ITSO ticketing standard.
UK STANDARDS: ITSO maintains specifications for secure interoperable transport ticketing transactions in the UK
The Department for Transport has completed its first NFC trial using the UK's ITSO ticketing standard, Computing reports:
The six-month trial in the north-west of England involved two bus operators and 36 passengers using near field communication (NFC)-enabled mobile phones to pay for bus tickets.
The first aim of the pilot was to demonstrate the viability of using an NFC phone as an ITSO ticket carrier, followed by testing to prove that ITSO-compliant products can be remotely loaded to, and validated on, NFC-enabled customer devices.
Software development carried out during the trial also led to the creation of cheaper ticket inspection devices, as well as changes to the ITSO specification to facilitate remote sales.
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