Why should a smart card manufacturer care about ITSO?
Smart ticketing has been identified as a growth opportunity for smart cards in the UK. In October 2013, the UK Department for Transport published: “Rail Fares and Ticketing: Next Steps”. In the chapter entitled “Building the smart ticketing system of the future”, they state:
“In future, smart ticketing on the national rail network will allow passengers to undertake their whole journey using a single smartcard, bank card or mobile phone. We have already started introducing smart ticketing and expect to see a gradual transition from paper to smart over the coming years.”
In the sub-section on Future Technologies, section 4.8 states:
“In the near term, smart ticketing on the rail network means ITSO smartcard ticketing. ITSO was designed to provide an open, interoperable and national ITSO specification which can accommodate the full range of transport ticket types on train and bus. Current smart ticketing schemes use ITSO and we will continue to use the ITSO specification.”
It is clear that the UK Government are backing the ITSO specification and have plans to deploy ITSO-based smart ticketing to rail in the UK. This is borne out by the SEFT program and the terms of the next generation of rail franchises – which all mandate ITSO-based smart ticketing.
If we look at the Rail Trends figures published by the UK Department for Transport on 24th October 2013, it indicates:
“In 2012/13 rail passengers made 1.5 billion journeys with franchised operators, travelling 36 billion miles.”
Every bit as interesting was that:
“The National Travel Survey shows that the average person in Great Britain made 19 trips in 2012 where surface rail was the main mode of travel, travelling on average 32 miles each trip.”
Clearly with the UK Government not only promoting, but driving the move to smart ticketing, there is opportunity for any smart card manufacturer with ambitions in this space.
OK, but how do I get an ITSO smart card product?
So, convinced that there is an opportunity in the ITSO market, how do you quickly deliver to this market? Even if you have access to a smart card development team, how long will it take to produce a product that is fit for certification? How do you find out what features are essential and deliver what your potential customers actually want?
While Rambus Ecebs are well known for their ITSO Paragon back office solutions in the UK transport market, it is less well known that Rambus Ecebs provide smart card software both inside and outside the UK.
In fact, Rambus Ecebs have delivered over 2.7 million smart cards over the last 3 years, covering both ITSO and non-ITSO related projects and yet Ecebs are not a card manufacturing company. So how does that work?
Up until now, Rambus Ecebs have contracted with card manufacturers who produce cards on our behalf. But card manufacturing is not core to Rambus Ecebs strategy. We wish to enable others to maximise the opportunities – and are now offering our class-leading ITSO certified smart card software for license, based on over a decade of ITSO product experience.
Rambus Ecebs ITSO smart card software is already proven and ITSO certified. In fact we have been producing ITSO-certified card software since ITSO began. Rambus Ecebs can provide this application on a number of platforms including Java Card and Infineon SLE77-based native platforms.
This gives you the opportunity to offer your customers a transport application with class leading performance and class leading space for tickets while safe in the knowledge it has been developed by people with decades of smart card experience – in fact by the team that developed the ITSO ISAM application.
To find out how you can gain accelerated entry to the ITSO smart card market, simply send an email to [email protected] requesting a call or more information.
References:
Department for Transport: “Rail Fares and Ticketing: Next Steps”, October 2013, http://bit.ly/DfTrailfaresandticketing
Department for Transport: “Rail Trends, Great Britain 2012/13”, October 2013, http://bit.ly/DfTrailtrendsGB
