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| Subject: Mifare Mifare or FeliCa cardsSonybut that could change. | |
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Author: Infineon/ProtonISO 14443require ISO-standard products. |
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Date Posted: 22:07:35 01/06/03 Mon Contactless Vendors Jockey For Position By Dan Balaban With hundreds of millions of contactless chips used for transit fare collection, building access and, to a lesser extent, retail payment–and healthy growth rates projected–the issue over interoperability of contactless cards, tokens and readers is not just idle radio chatter. Buyers don’t want to be locked into a proprietary technology that forces them to buy their components from a single source. The problem is, there are at least three major types of contactless products on the market that differ in the way data—for example, a transit fare transaction—is transmitted via radio waves between a card or token and the reader a few centimeters away. Cards from one of the product or interface types cannot work with readers from another because the voltage of the radio signal and format of the data are incompatible. The industry calls these different interface types "A," "B" and "C"—code-named as such for the purpose of hashing out an international standard. There are still other product types operating at the same radio frequency and designated with a different letter of the alphabet. All are vying for a piece of the expanding pie, yet all are incompatible. The standard, known as ISO 14443 and adopted a couple of years ago, seems to have done little to cut through the static for card issuers and systems integrators shopping for contactless components for their fare collection, building security and other projects. Vendors are jockeying for position more than ever, especially Japan’s Sony Corp.’s, whose FeliCa line of contactless products got left out in the cold by the standards-makers. The electronics giant has been busy concluding partnerships and licensing deals with major smart card chip makers to ensure FeliCa’s survival. That effort has led to the introduction of at least three new high-end smart card chips, one from South Korean-based Samsung Electronics and a pair from Infineon Technologies of Germany, one in partnership with Sony. Both chip makers believe they can capture more business around the globe from systems integrators and card vendors using any or all of the three contactless types. Samsung was first to launch a multi-interface chip, demonstrating it in July at the CardTech Korea 2002 exhibition in Seoul. Infineon was planning to follow with an unveiling at the Cartes 2002 exhibition in Paris this month. Besides the contactless interfaces and protocols, the chips also pack a contact interface. Thus, a bank could use the chip to issue a card with a credit application or retail e-purse that a customer would insert into a contact reader at the point of sale; but the customer could also pay transit fares with a flash or tap of the card on a readers. The card issuer needn’t worry if the transit system uses type A, B or C readers at the subway gate or bus ticket validator. "Samsung’s new combi-chip satisfies three different protocols that means a single chip that supports types A, B and C can operate in Korea, China and Japan without any need to change the protocol configurations," said the company in a statement. Chips such as these could help open the floodgates for contactless applications, touts a promotional piece from Infineon and Sony. It compares the contactless potential for smart cards to what the wireless revolution did for mobile phones. "For that vision to become an everyday reality, it is essential that cards can be read out irrespectively of the prevailing reader infrastructure." While Samsung and Infineon say they are mainly promoting new chips sporting two interface types, their chips either can support all three or likely will in the future. Misguided Signal? While these new chips have their uses, the approach is generally wrongheaded, contend competitors. Why add each of the A, B and C radio interfaces and data and security protocols to the same card when you can add them to the readers—of which there would be far fewer in a given fare collection or building access project. "You can imagine, every extra interface you add to a chip adds silicon; cost is relative to chip size," says Thomas Riener, marketing segment manager for the smart card chip unit at Netherlands-based Philips Semiconductors, whose Mifare line of contactless products are type A. "For 10,000 readers and 3 million cards, it makes more sense to add this to the reader side." The additional card costs range from 5% to 10% to perhaps double the price of cards that support only one contactless interface and protocol, observers say. The more expensive chips require more surface area to accommodate circuits for sending and receiving data, which pass through the card’s antenna. Even more space is needed to store security codes that authenticate cardholders and can protect data sent over the air. Each of the A, B and C product types has its own security scheme, says Andy Richardson, strategy manager for wireless commerce at Texas Instruments’ RFid Systems. "If you want one memory card to run a transit application in Hong Kong and a transit application in Korea, you’ve got to run two security architectures and two air interfaces," he says. "You basically double the cost of the token." That’s for chips containing memory only. The Samsung and Infineon chips sport microprocessors to support multiple applications and to crunch encryption algorithms on the card, which is more secure than drawing the processing power from the readers, as with memory-only chips. Microprocessors can up the price of contactless cards dramatically. Infineon’s chip, with the extras, including power-boosting co-processor to run sophisticated PKI security for ID or financial applications, would cost about 3 euros (US$2.91) each, says Serge Petit, marketing director for contactless controllers. Finished card costs would, of course, be higher. A major impetus behind the launching of the new chips is the fact the international standard, ISO 14443, takes in only two of the interface types, A and B. All of the other types are classified as "options." It dictates that any vendor wanting to promote its products as ISO-compliant must support both A and B in the reader, not necessarily on the cards. The latter could carry either A or B or both. Some systems integrators and contactless chip makers say all the new tenders they see from transit operators and other card issuers require ISO-standard products. That means many or most of the new contactless readers being installed have to take both A and B type cards. "If the readers are already required to accept type A and B, it doesn’t make any sense to make the cards A and B," says Brian Monk, senior principal systems engineer for the automated fare collections unit of U.S.-based systems integrator Cubic Transportation Systems. Avoiding Single-Source Supply Some issuers using Sony’s type C cards, such as the Land Transport Authority in Singapore, have required readers to also accept type B cards. "Type C is proprietary to Sony; we thought we’d better have (the possibility for) other cards, just in case Sony goes out of business," says Silvester Prakasam, general manager of EZ-Link Ltd, which LTA formed to run the fare-collection system. These developments are troubling for Sony, which, according to the company, has delivered more than 30 million FeliCa cards. Those cards are mainly for transit fare collection in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore, but also for contactless retail electronic purse and credit cards the company is promoting in Japan. Sony in January failed to gain approval from the International Organization for Standardization to make type C an integral part of the 14443 standard. Besides Sony, ISO committee members turned away four other aspirants, including Cubic and its GoCard (code-named "type E"), deciding two interface types were enough for one standard. Cubic may merge GoCard, used in some U.S. transit card projects, with the type B standard, says Monk. All of its new readers already support the standard, along with GoCard, whose technical specifications are similar to type B anyway. It would be more difficult for Sony to adapt FeliCa because the chip’s data speed, among other things, is substantially different from either A or B, although it would be possible to merge with type B. "We encouraged them to, but they never did it; they still consider their card technology to be superior," says Peter Spalding, smart card specialist for Australia-based fare-collection system vendor ERG Group. In Hong Kong, the problem hasn’t so much been higher card costs, as the cost and delivery times for new devices Octopus card backers would like to introduce, says Sammy Kam, chief technology officer for Octopus Cards Ltd., formerly Creative Star Ltd. Sony’s Post-ISO Strategy These other devices include watches, mobile phones, PDAs and credit cards, all into which FeliCa chips and radio antennas could be embedded. Octopus Card backers have also looked at ordering FeliCa-ready readers cardholders could hook to PCs for payment on the Internet and in-vehicle transponders for paying road tolls. "In the past, Sony tried to do all these things itself or preferred to partner with some Japanese companies," he says. "A much higher premium will be required for these new products as a result. But Sony has changed quite a lot in the past year. They have licensed FeliCa card technologies to other companies so that we can buy type C-compatible cards from other vendors later." Besides card vendors, Sony has taken the even larger step of allowing major smart card chip makers to license FeliCa. Besides Samsung and Infineon, Hitachi Ltd. will also launch a dual-interface or combi-chip by the end of the year, supporting type C. But in perhaps an even more significant development, Sony in early September announced it had formed a partnership with Philips Semiconductors parent Royal Philips Electronics to develop an enhanced version of the short-range radio frequency technology both use in their respective types A and C contactless chips. The new system, which they call near-field radio-frequency communication, or NFC, would use the same 13.56 MHz radio frequency as types A, B and C, but would expand data speeds and transmission range. The electronics companies say they plan to embed NFC chips in all sorts of consumer devices, including mobile phones, PDAs, laptops, digital cameras and game consoles, allowing users to beam photos or games, for example, among devices. But NFC would also enable these devices to communicate with either Mifare or FeliCa cards, or devices bearing either of these chips, such as phones. Cardholders could log onto game consoles, make credit card purchases, or download tickets, for example, just by holding their cards or phones next to a particular device. The first NFC devices aren’t due until 2004. Sony declined to talk about its strategy, but a spokesman indicated the company is looking for other options for keeping FeliCa healthy. "We will continue to pursue ISO certification possibilities for FeliCa," he says. "If we decide that NFC is more advantageous, we consider NFC certification as the upper layer technology of FeliCa, and Mifare." The strategy is simple, says Texas Instruments’ Richardson: "Sony recognizes they are not in the 14443 standard; they are seeking alliances with those that are in the 14443 standard." Production Efficiency It is too early to tell whether the A-B-C chips will find a market. But if they do, the chips could make for more efficient production for chip makers targeting worldwide markets, says Samsung Electronics’ Lee Su-rak, a director of marketing. "If we developed A, B and C as a different product, we have to make three masks (operating systems), and it would be very confusing to produce in our fab (plant)," he says. Samsung’s chip will actually support types A and B, plus a third interface, which may or may not be C. Some chips may roll off the assembly line with only one interface activated. Infineon will launch two separate chips, one that combines A and B, similar to one it has offered before, and one with B and C. Sony apparently didn’t want to share space with type A Mifare on the Infineon chip, but that could change. But having the A, B and/or C interfaces activated on the cards will just slow down transactions because readers have to decide which protocol to use, says Bruno Moreau, deputy general manager for French-based ASK SA, a contactless card and software provider lodged firmly in the type B camp. It’s better to support the different protocols in the reader. And anyway, 95% of card use in transit is local, so there is little demand for cards that work across regions or countries, he says. Infineon, like Samsung, disagrees, and notes there is already a large base of readers installed that support just one interface, A, B or C. "Replacing that infrastructure is a very costly thing, and you can’t do that on an easy basis," says Ingo Susemihl, head of Infineon’s contactless business unit. With new multi-interface chips making the rounds at exhibit halls, and Sony apparently unwavering in its support for FeliCa, it seems likely contactless card issuers and systems integrators will be reviewing their ABC’s for years to come. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
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| Re: Mifare or FeliCa cardsSonybut that could change. | http://www.voy.com/100711/5/597.html | 08:14:33 01/07/03 Tue |