RFID in Japan

It was March 1999 when NTT introduced so-called "IC Card Public Phones." These RFID-based public phones (right) were expected to replace existing magnetic card based public phones (left). However, NTT recently decided to discontinue the effort of spreading these great high-tech public phones with embedded RFID sensors and Infrared receivers.
In the near future, all public phones in Japan will be the same old gray magnetic-card-based ones. Thank God, they have data ports for mobile computers.

(photo taken at a JR train station in Tokyo last week)

source NTT East Press Release, January 20, 2005, in Japanese

I appreciate your patience...

I am leaving here in five hours at around 5:15AM in order to catch the flight at 8:30AM. My plan is to arrive at the airport 2 hours before the departure, i.e., 6:30AM.

Will I forget about privacy risks and use "RFID passport" if I can sleep for 6.5 hours, till 6:45AM. Well, to be honest, I might...

Narita Airport in Japan (which is actually where I am flying into very soon) will start a pilot test of RFID biometric cards this February. If you are a milage club memeber of All Nippon Airways or Japan Air Line, you can apply for a biometric RFID card that can make the check-in process of your next international air travel extremely efficient. The government and the airport collaborate in this pilot test project. Currently, travelers are recommended to arrive at the airport 2 hours before the departure of an international flight, however, they say, if you get a biometric RFID card, you can arrive 30 minutes before the departure instead of 2 hours. RFID readers will be available at some check-in counters, security check points, and departure control areas so that card holders can show their cards to the machines rather than human officers.

The pilot test will last for about 2 months until the end of March.

via Asahi.com, January 18, in Japanese

According to Shanghai Explorer, 200 RFID condom vending machines appeared in Shanghai last November. As part of the activities related to AIDS Awareness Week, 10,000 RFID cards were distributed to citizens, which can be used to get free condoms from the vending machines.

9.11% Shanghai citizens used condoms in 1995 and the number is expected to increase to 19.5% in 2005. These numbers are much higher than the Chinese average use rate of 5.3%.

via Shanghai Explorer, November 30, 2004, in Japanese and this blog (which I don't know how to spell with alphabets), in Japanese

AICA Kogyo Company and Toppan Forms Co., Ltd. developed RFID labels that can be directly pasted on metal surfaces (like stickers). They are flexible and can be pasted on curved surfaces.

Conventional RFID tags for metal surfaces are thick so as to avoid disturbance of RF signals. AICA Kogyo Company developed a certain magnetic substance that can be used to create a thin layer between a label's sticky surface and RFID chip/antenna.

via Yahoo News!, January 7, 2005, in Japanese

Kyowa's GPS school bags are selling a lot better than expected. There was a massive increase of the number of product inquiries after the tragedy of the school girl murder, the company says. Since a new school year starts in April, the market of school bags is most active in January and February. Nevertheless, the company already sold more than 500 GPS bags and also expects to sell all the GPS bags they have (additional 9,500 bags) by the end of this month. A GPS school bag costs about US$300.

via Nikkansports.com, January 7, 2005, in Japanese

A recent article on Mainichi Shimbun discusses uses of near-future technologies including RFID. It argues that RFID tags can enhance the safety of the elderly and the handicapped at pedestrian crossings. The scenario goes as follows:

The elderly and the handicapped receive RFID tags whose information is registered in a database. They wear the tags on their chests when they go out. When they come close to a traffic light that is equipped with a sensor device, the computer that controls the light can recognize the RFID tags, change its state to a green light and make sure that it doesn't change until they finish crossing a street. Such a system may reduce certain kinds of traffic accidents.

Sounds to me like a good idea, but will this scheme actually work? I know it doesn't if everyone has such RFID tags...

via Mainichi Shimbun Universal Salon, January 4, 2005, in Japanese

About 3 weeks ago, NTT DoCoMo announced that they sold more than a million i-mode FeliCa cell phones a.k.a. wallet phones.

When I visited Japan in August and in November, I didn't feel that wallet phones were hugely popular although many consumers seemed to be aware of them.

At this point, there are six different kinds of wallet phone handsets available including three 3G Foma handsets (F900iC, F901iC, and SH901iC) and these handsets can be used at 13,000 shops and 2,700 vending machines (numbers as of November 2004).

DoCoMo seems to believe that they can sell a lot more wallet phone handsets this year: the company wants to achieve the total sales of 10 million handsets by the end of March 2006.

I guess embedded FeliCa RFID chips will be more like a standard component for DoCoMo's future handsets...

via ITMedia, December 15, 2004, in Japanese. < IT News Archives 2005, Jaunary 5, 2005, in Japanese.