Sony FeliCa Gets Near Field Boost
Sony announced today that the 13.56 MHz Near Field (NF) Communication technology that’s been under wraps with Royal Philips Electronics has got green lights from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) under the ISO/IEC IS 18092 standard. So now Philips and Sony cards can talk to each other, taking FeliCa –or what it’s now calling the NFC Chips — to cellies, cameras and… knowing Sony, just about anything it can to talk to the Europeans.
Sony announced today that the 13.56 MHz Near Field (NF) Communication technology that’s been under wraps with Royal Philips Electronics has got green lights from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) under the ISO/IEC IS 18092 standard. So now Philips and Sony cards can talk to each other, taking FeliCa –or what it’s now calling the NFC Chips — to cellies, cameras and… knowing Sony, just about anything it can to talk to the Europeans.
Sony and Philips got together in autumn 2002 to see if they could get Philips Mifare and Sony FeliCa to get compatible, and to give NF technology out there. They’ve come up with an open technical standard called NFC-IP1 that utilizes the 13.56 MHz wavelength, and is composed of a physical layer and data link layer. When devices with an NFCIP-1 compatible chip are brought into proximity, they will be able to recognize each other within a certain range (about 10 cm, the companies claim,) and can exchange information.
NFC IP-1 is supposed to be an “intuitive” method where simply bringing devices into proximity allows them to directly recognize each other and communicate, less bothersome than ID devices displaying as screen icons, or having them selected within Bluetooth or WLAN networks.
Data exchange will take place at grandma pushing the shopping loaded bike up the hill speeds (slows?) of 106 kbps, 212 kbps or 424 kbps. Hardly Formula-1 stuff. Funny how expectations change: Kilobits and bytes and bobs seem to be speeds of the 90s, not the 21st century. But the companies do claim that transfer to other communications protocols with “higher” speeds, is possible, although they don’t give any details AT ALL.
Sony also didn’t say directly when it will start embedding NFC chips into Sony Ericsson phones, cameras, Clies and Vaios. While Sony has a reputation for announcing loads of cool stuff and then have it disappear if it doesn’t take off, the move still potentially represents another big jump forward, for seeding Sony contactless IC technology out of the mainly ticketing applications it has enjoyed as the Suica card for JR East.