GSMA publishes Near Field Communications technical guidelines

GSMA publishes Near Field Communications (NFC) technical guidelines white paper

The GSM Association (GSMA) has today published the first in a series of ‘Technical Guidelines’ white papers on mobile NFC (Near Field Communication) services, providing the consolidated views of mobile operators as input to support the standardisation of NFC technology. More than twenty mobile operators, including many of the largest in the world, have been working together in the GSMA’s initiative to develop a common vision for Mobile NFC services. The initiative aims to support the development of a stable and efficient NFC ecosystem and promote interoperability, leading to standardisation on a global scale.

The Mobile Operators involved in the NFC initiative serve more than 800 million mobile users. They are: Bouygues Telecom; China Mobile; AT&T (formerly Cingular Wireless); Elisa; KPN; KTF; Mobilkom Austria; NTT DoCoMo Inc.; Orange; Rogers Wireless; SFR; SKTelecom; Telefónica; Telenor; TeliaSonera; Telecom Italia; TMN; Turkcell; Vodafone and ‘3’.

The ‘Technical Guidelines’ white paper follows the publication of the NFC ecosystem and related business requirements paper, published in February 2007. It provides a technical analysis of the UICC (the Universal Integrated Circuit Card which is situated inside the handset containing users' unique profiles and information) to the NFC Chip interface, the Mobile to reader interface and the multi-application UICC framework. Future versions of the white paper will include technical guidelines covering Host Controller Interface (HCI) to Single Wire Protocol (SWP) interface, the UICC run-time environment and Over-The-Air (OTA) provisioning.

The GSMA aims to communicate the key findings of the white paper to the broader industry to facilitate the development of NFC technology and services with the key standardisation bodies such as ETSI and the NFC Forum to further provide input to the standardisation process.