Trial success for mobile tickets

Queues could be soon cut after the DfT completes the first government trial for mobile-based ticketing

The Department for Transport has completed the first live mobile phone ticketing trial using the government-mandated ITSO smartcard standard.

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.

Mobile ticketing could help bus operators generate savings, according to John Elliott of Consult Hyperion, one of the consultancies working on the project.

"Bus operators do not believe that the benefits of using mobile technology for ticketing will be fed directly to them, but they can save on the cost of ticket inspectors and in the issuance of smartcards," he said.

The third and final stage of the research is an optional second trial to prove that the test technology from the second phase could be used in a live environment.

Widespread industry opinion suggests that the consolidation of bank cards and mobile systems could be the answer for a unified ticketing scheme, but progress could be hindered by the poor availability of NFC-enabled handsets in the UK, as well as conflicts between mobile operators and banks in areas such as security standards, said Elliott.

Transport for London carried out a mobile ticketing trial with Barclaycard last year. The transport body told the London Assembly in October that it intended to replace the Oyster travelcard with new mobile phone or bankcard-based ticketing systems.