Aussie phones to get smart about transport

By Rodney Appleyard

Following the recent announcement of mobile phones being used eventually to pay for goods in Japan, Australia is looking to start the ball rolling on similar technology, starting with the public transport system.

It could be some time until Australia catches up with its Japanese counterparts, but according to Gartner analysts, smart cards need to be used in public transport before they can be deployed for retail purposes and inside mobile phones.

Smart cards have been used in Hong Kong for the last seven years to pay for public transport journeys, but it is only now that those same cards can be used to also pay for newspapers, McDonalds and other goods at retail stalls within train stations.

Robin Simpson, the research director of mobiles and wireless for Gartner Australasia, explained how Australia needs to make the cultural shift towards accepting smart cards.

"It's a chicken and egg situation. In the past, retailers didn't invest in smart cards because nobody had one, and nobody wanted a smart card because they could not buy anything with them. History has shown that when technology is deployed within the infrastructure of public transport, then ideas like this catch on, because such a wide range of people get to use the technology quickly.

"There are currently programmes in Sydney, Perth and Brisbane, which will be deployed next year, that will test the deployment of smart cards for use in public transport. Once these cards are widely used by the public, then retailers, such as shops inside train stations, will begin to allow their items to be bought by smart cards.

"This is what happened in Hong Kong, where people can now buy up to $20 dollars worth of goods on the cards. It will be three or four years before this will happen in Australia though. It will take a while for people to trust the technology."

Simpson also believes that it will take even longer until we reach the stage in Japan, where smart cards will be incorporated into mobile phones and used for large scale transactions through a link to the user's bank account. But deploying smart cards for use in public transport is a stepping stone towards that eventual goal.

Simpson also believes that the public will have to get used to trusting the cards too before they will allow large scale banking transactions to be carried out through the use of these cards.

He said that this technology could be deployed earlier in Japan, because their culture has already embraced the possibility of buying everything from machines. So the smart card inside a phone makes that tradition even more convenient for a country that has already trusts smart cards.

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