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NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile operator, plans to demonstrate a mobile phone that supports Near Field Communication technology and all three of the world's major contactless protocols next month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, according to the managing director of DoCoMo's European office. DoCoMo hopes eventually to sell the phone or models like it to its upscale subscribers to use for contactless ticketing and payment when they visit in Europe or elsewhere outside of Japan, says Hiroshi Tamano of DoCoMo Europe Ltd. The NFC-enabled phone would support types A and B of the major international contactless standards along with the FeliCa proprietary protocol from Japan's Sony Corp., sometimes referred to as type C. "We can demonstrate service can be roamed from one country to another using one handset," said Tamano, speaking at the Transport Ticketing 09 conference this week in London organized by Clarion Events. If introduced in Japan, the handset could be the first NFC phone sold by DoCoMo, which since 2004 has rolled out more than 32 million contactless wallet phones in Japan using technology similar to NFC from Sony. Chip vendors and NFC co-creators Sony and NXP Semiconductors of the Netherlands are involved in the project, Tamano tells CardLine Global sister publication Cards&Payments. The vendors formed a joint venture in late 2007, Moversa, to work on such projects. The vendors' involvement means the contactless chips and separate secure chips in the prototype phone will support NXP's Mifare technology, which is popular in transit fare-collection schemes in Europe, the Americas and China. A close approximation of the type B standard is used for transit ticketing in France and other countries in Europe. Felica mainly is used in Japan and Hong Kong. But the prototype phone also eventually could help DoCoMo introduce more-standard contactless technology, including NFC, to its subscribers for use in Japan. If international card schemes Visa Inc. and MasterCard Worldwide can roll out their standard contactless applications in Japan, for example, DoCoMo subscribers could use these applications when they tap their phones for domestic transactions. DoCoMo, however, has its own payment application on its wallet phones in Japan, so it may not be keen on making it easier for foreign payment schemes to gain a foothold in the contactless market. For now, DoCoMo's strategy appears to enable subscribers to use the same phone to tap to board the subway or make retail purchases whether they are in Tokyo, London or Paris.
