British Telecommunications Plc will replace its optical phone cards with Smart Cards within the next 12 months following current trials in Portsmouth, Hampshire. The newly set up Card Technology division of GPT Payphone Systems, a subsidiary of GEC Plessey Telecommunications Ltd, itself oned 60% by GEC Plc, 40% by Siemens AG, will supply 200 smart pay phones and 100,000 Smart Cards for the trial. GPT’s Sapphire card phones, tested in Toxteth, Liverpool for their resistance to vandalism, will be used in the trial. The company is working on an upgraded system which will use a Hitachi Ltd H8 16-bit chip rather than the Toshiba Corp TMP 90 8-bit processor used in the British Telecom phones. The H8 started out as an 8-bit part, and was once the subject of a lawsuit from Motorola Inc, which thought it a bit too much like the 6800. The upgraded version, to be used in the forthcoming Mondex Smart Card trials in Swindon, Wiltshire will use Japan’s I-Tron operating system, the industrial version of Tron, The Real-time Operating Nucleus, once touted at Japan’s all-purpose answer to Unix which failed to become widely adopted. The upgraded system will have a display panel with a menu and key pad showing the options available that will link to service providers computer systems via a GPT’s systems management interface. The company anticipates the new systems’ uses will extend from transfer of funds using Smart Cards to the use of the cards as driving licences, passports and medical records. GPT is currently talking to UK banks with a view to linking its smart pay phones to automatic teller machines. Facsimile telephones – pay phones connected to cash machines that use Smart Cards also seem likely in the future. GPT is also testing its contactless cards in place of bus tickets with Tampere City Transport in Finland and London Transport in Harrow Middlesex. The card works by generating a current when placed on a card reader which acts as an aerial to transmit information. However, for the time being GPT sees its main market for Smart Cards as pre-paid phone cards, with adoption of electronic purse applications three to five years away.
