Vodafone tests Touch&Travel all new Deutsche Bahn Ticket System

by: Bena Roberts Friday, February 29th, 2008

200 beta testers are currently using Touch&Travel.

Touch&Travel?

This is a new eTicket underground service created by the Germany Railway and mobile operator Vodafone Germany.

No doubt to coincide with CeBIT next week the test area includes the ICE stretch from Berlin to Hannover.

How does it work?

Basically the mobile phone is the ticket. There are touchpoints at stations and you click the phone to the touchpoint and get the price of the train ticket and then you can pay instantly.

The service is a partnership between Vodafone, DB, Verkehrsbetrieb Potsdam GmbH, the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe also the Technologiepartner ATRON electronic, Giesecke&Devrient, Motorola and NXP.

What we think

Mobile ticketing and payment is becoming a reality. But the joke about this and other NFC services is that in many cases these services will work on a pre-installed client and an NFC handset is not necessary. Also the touchpoints are relatively small and are open for abuse. It won’t surprise me if vandals ruin them – killing the overall user experience.

On top of that I fear issues of standarisation will arise once more as at MoMo Frankfurt I met another company testing NFC ticketing in Frankfurt with a different operator and Nokia, not Motorola devices.

One Response to “Vodafone tests Touch&Travel all new Deutsche Bahn Ticket System”

Ron Said:

Basically the same system as we pilot togheter with Mobiqa in the UK with SMS tickets since march 2007 and 1000-s of tickets allready have been distributed, scanned and validated at turnstiles on Marylebone Station, London.
Now the carier is a RFID enabled phone. Technically it wil work but this is a closed environment test and I question the relevance of feasability on a large scale with only 3 to 4 NFC phones around? Who is trying to prove what?
The Mobile Push Barcode is an open system (not a closed system) that can be received on 98% of all phones and Deutche Bahn, Tren Italia, Eurostar and others allready sell print at home tickets so have a complete online ticketing environment in place and distibute tickets digitally. More likely that the print at home ticket will be followed up by the mobile push barcode ticket sooner then we all have NFC phones in our pocket (because only then NFC phones are an open system and I rest my case :-).

Comment made on February 29th, 2008 at 7:46 am