A group of 250 season ticket holders of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team and Atlanta Thrashers hockey team the have joined a trial of near field communication (NFC) technology that uses RFID to enable phones as well as other small personal electronic devices, like PDAs to make e-payments, download/exchange data, or perform other applications.



Nearly 100 fans such have already received an NFC-enabled Nokia 3220 phone that they can use to download news, graphics like pictures of players or wallpapers and promotional video clips from specially branded ’smart posters’ throughout the arena. Passive RFID tags are embedded inside the posters. So what happens is when a fan holds the phone within a few inches of the poster, an RFID reader embedded in the phone reads a special URL from the tag. The phone’s Web browser then opens that URL that allows the user to choose content. This URL is not made available to the general public, so the pilot’s participants are the only ones with access to this content. The payment functionality that will enable fans to use their phones to make purchases by holding them up to RFID payment terminals won’t be available until January 2006.



The trial will last throughout the Thrasher and Hawks seasons.



Source: RFID Journal