NFC city

NFC (Near Field Communication) has been considered to be one of the most promising platforms for innovation in mobile services. The area has been characterized by a lack of NFC services and therefore little demand for NFC phones. On this basis, NFC City started as a joint innovation project with the objective to stimulate the development and use of NFC services. The project has been running from December 2010 to June 2014, including 8 partners (Cominor, Doorstep, DNB, FARA, Telenor, SIFO, Troms County and the University of Tromsø). In addition, the Student Welfare Association has been linked to the project. The project has developed and tested a set of information services (canteen menu, next bus, tonight's programme, trip advisor, training guide on sports centre ...) as well as coffee card, bus ticket and key to student housing on the mobile. Approximately 60 students have participated as test users. The students appreciated using the mobile phone as bus ticket, but sought information that was adapted to time, place and personal preferences. Furthermore, the electronic wallet service Valyou has been evaluated in three rounds of respectively 220, 130 and 89 users. The project also looked at how different stakeholders can collaborate and gain profit from this type of services. To raise public awareness of new technology and the opportunities it brings, the project has: arranged conferences, developed demos of new service concepts, organized competitions, developed NFC and SIM programming courses at university level, developed tools for administration of NFC services and, providing advice to service providers. The project has also made contributions to trade associations and standardization bodies. The project has received considerable attention in the media (including NRK Schrödinger's cat and VG). The results have also been disseminated in scientific publications including works by master students of Industrial Economics, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Social Science and, Service Design.

The project vision is to provide value by simplifying everyday tasks through use of NFC services. The underlying idea is to expose users to a range of NFC services within a limited geographical area - a NFC city. The choice of Tromsø as NFC city is both e conomically feasible and has a potential of making good experiences for users and businesses, and thereby serve as an exhibition of successful NFC service implementation and use. By utilising existing technologies to provide NFC services within ticketing , payment and physical access, the project will create an arena where services from different providers can run independently and with good usability on the same mobile handsets. The services will be developed and tried out through a field trial approach where genuine users are involved in a realistic setting, using technology they can handle on their own. The objective is to gain user experience on a pilot solution and knowledge on the solution's applicability. If this is done right, the project will co ntribute to solve the current deadlock situation where handset vendors, service providers and users are waiting for the others to make a move, i.e. lack of NFC handsets hampers service development and lack of services is no good incitement for developing new handsets. When the project is finished after three years, it should have released some of the potential of NFC services in terms of increased number of handsets, users and services offered by a value system of service providers, mobile operators and financial institutions. The project is structured into nine work packages and nine active partners have expressed an interest to participate. The partners include service providers, system integrators, mobile network operator, trusted service manager an d research institutions. The project activities will involve industry organisations and standardisation bodies.