Near Field Communications Coming To A Smartphone Near You News

Your smartphone has several specialized wireless radios crammed under its shiny screen, each one speciaficallly tuned to emit and receive data in the form of radio waves of a particular frequency. GPS satellite beam , 3G/4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth handle the short range connections. Near Field Communication (NFC) is designed to make mobile payments easier, and simplify small file transfer.

Under The Hood

NFC operates at the 13.56MHz frequency and supports transmission rates of between 106Kbps and 424Kpbs to send small bursts of data up to approximately 4 centimeters. NFC is based on RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) standards, which use similar frequencies, but typically involve an nonpowered, tags. RFID technology is widely used in  retail and manufacturing industries to track and manage inventory. With NFC, both the device that initiates the communication and the responding device can be powered, but the specification also supports passive tags.

Security Concerns

Any system that purports to make paying for goods and services by simply waving your device at the cash register had better have a rock solid system in place designed to protects its users from theft and fraud. Thankfully, NFC does. To protect yourself, you can enable multiple authentication factors, such as a PIN, that you input whenever you make a contactless payment.

NFC Then & Now

The first NFC-enabled smart-phone to the light of day was the Nokia 6131, which came out in 2006. In 2010, The Samsung Nexus S became the first Android-based phone to support NFC. In 2011, Research In Motion’s (now called BlackBerry) devices became the first to be certified for MasterCard’s PayPass system, which let users make retail purchases using their NFC-capable decices. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 devices, launched late last year include natinve support for NFC.

The NFC seesaw

NFC is currently dealin with the classic chicken/egg pitfall that often crushes so many technologies: Handset makers are reluctant to include NFC radios in their devices because few retailers support cantactless terminals, but retailers won’t invest because few mobile phones support the techonolgy. Despite the raod bump and delays, juniper expects NFC retail transaction values to reach $110 billion by 2007. Yankee Group expexts the 7 million installed base of 2011 to ballon to 203 million by 2015. And Frost & Sullivan expext that 53% of new phones will be NFC-capable in 2015. Indeed, NFC is coming.