Ray de Silva, MArket Development Director at GSMA outlines some of the progress being made in developing the SIM-secured mobile NFC ecosystem at a recent NFC focussed event in Milan
2. The GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide.
Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the
world’s mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the
broader mobile ecosystem.
Founded in 1987 by 15 operators committed to the joint development of a cross border digital system for mobile communicationsThe GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem.Mandate to drive collective action; Innovating, incubating and creating new opportunities for its membership, to drive the growth of the global mobile communications
Spectrum for Mobile Broadband: Securing the spectrum required to meet the fast-growing demand for Mobile Broadband.Mobile NFC: Enabling a wide range of innovative applications, such as mobile ticketing, mobile payments, entertainment services and couponing using SIM-secured mobile NFC.Embedded Mobile: Providing the connectivity that will revolutionise industry sectors such as healthcare, automotive, utilities and education.Rich Communications: Delivering advanced multimedia communications on any device, across any network.Mobile Identity: Unlocking the potential that electronic and mobile identity can offer the industry and its consumers.Creation of Identity/remote enrolment, Proof of Identity (ID Storage and Retrieval, Mobile Digital Signature)Global Roaming: The global roaming market is characterised by strong price declines across all services and widespread tariff innovation. Operators in all regions are driving retail tariff prices down across all services, with declines of up to 82% since 2007.
The consumer is the centre of all of these new opportunities – & they are not thin single layer services – they are coupled to one anotherHaving all of them on a single NFC enabled mobile enables many services in many vertical industriesLikeIn banking – payments, transfer & banking servicesTickteting, stadium, gig access, Transportation – bus, train, tramLoyalty - coupled with a retail experience and paymentAccess as we have seen before. There are MANY other verticals and opportunities.
For us – that next step of interoperability is critical.In order to interoperate NFC must be global to deliver economies of scale (great if you can use NFC here in China, but NYC, London, Korea, Japan) – so it must interoperate from country to country. One key aspect of this interoperability is global and foundational technical specs as well as security. We see that happening right now in the SIM card. Our view puts the SE, or secure element, on the SIM. In addition, as mentioned previously, SIM-based handsets account for nearly 90% of the mobile world - providing an incredible distribution mechanism for the future of NFC.This allows open access to a variety of ecosystems and adjacent industries including transport, retail, banking, access control, loyalty and vouchering.Finally, the consumers have to be at the heart of the equation with access, ubiquity, interoperability, scale, & security.
There is clear momentum in the market today, with new NFC service launches, new devices and new partnerships being announced all the time. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but I would like to highlight some of the key deployments and trials around the world. Here’s one that I’m very familiar with – in France, the Cityzi service has been in service in Nice since May 2010, and the city of Strasbourg will be the second in France to offer a commercial NFC service from October 17th. The service will be rolled out in 8 more cities across France by the middle of 2012. In the United States, ISIS has formed business relationships with Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express, which provides merchants and consumers ubiquity and freedom of choice when it comes to payment network acceptance. ISIS is on course to deploy services in 5 cities in 2012.In Asia, we see collaboration among the Japanese and Korean operators to provide cross-border NFC services. KDDI, Softbank and SK Telecom have been testing cross-border NFC services with the aim of launching commercial services by the end of this year. The first services in trial include mobile payments and smart posters. NTT DOCOMO and KT are also developing NFC services that span Japan and Korea, and plan to deploy commercially in 2012. Services will include mobile payments, mass transit ticketing and promotional couponing services. Clearly, there is significant momentum behind NFC around the world.Frost and Sullivan estimates that by 2015, there will be more than 860 million NFC-enabled handsets worldwide, and the payment value of NFC will reach €110 billion globally.