Topic: NTT DoCoMo
Category: Mobile Phones
Technorati: Linking Blogs

If you're interested in FeliCa, you'll eat this right up.
That's right, I'm going to translate this entire interview K-Tai Watch did with Fumio Takizawa, the Section Manager of FeliCa Networks' Public Relations Department.
This is perhaps the longest article I've ever translated, once I finish.

NTT DoCoMo will begin the new "i-Mode FeliCa" service in the first part of July. By putting a contactless IC chip inside of a cellular phone, electronic money and credit cards can be used, and shop memberships can be verified all with o­nly the use of a cellular phone.

The chip loaded in complies to the "FeliCa" standard developed by Sony. FeliCa can currently be seen in commuter passes and prepaid cards with JR East Japan's "Suica," and BitWallet's electronic money service, "Edy." It is also used overseas, primarily in Asia.

In an attempt to encourage the spread of FeliCa by using cellular phones, NTT DoCoMo and Sony announced in October of 2003 that they would establish a jointly managed company to be named "FeliCa Networks." While the company, who also saw financial investment from JR East Japan, currently exists as "bridge building" connecting cellular phones and FeliCa, what sort of role does it actually carry out? We asked this, as well as questions about other characteristics of FeliCa, to the Section Manager of FeliCa Networks' PR Department, Fumio Takizawa.

-Sony is the FeliCa license holder

-Is FeliCa Networks carrying out the development of new technology and managing the FeliCa license?

Mr. Takizawa:
"Although it is often mistaken due to our company name, Sony currently possesses the license to the FeliCa standard. We are doing things such as developing a dual chip, and producing the FeliCa chips to be inserted in cellular phones. The o­nly things we do are those related to putting chips inside of cellular phones. While we are currently active o­nly domestically, if cellular phones containing FeliCa spread, we will probably expand overseas."

What services will FeliCa Networks be offering for i-Mode FeliCa? At the time of i-Mode FeliCa's announcement (June 16th), it was announced that the company would be offering the "'on FeliCa' Remote Publications Service."

Mr. Takizawa:
"This service is intended for business people who will be offering FeliCa services themselves, and will be for writing the necessary initial data using an i-Mode connection. For a general user, this service will be taking place when they don't even know it, so for them it won't really feel like FeliCa Networks even exists yet."

-What's the difference between the card-type and cellular phone-types?

-I currently use FeliCa that is contained in Suica and Edy cards, but what is different about the chips in these cards from the chips in the cellular phones?

Mr. Takizawa:
"Although with cards, the supported services and included applications are written o­n it from the beginning, this is not the case with the cellular phone chips - there is nothing o­n them when you get them. Users will choose the applications to write to the chip. This is the biggest difference."

-When looking from a user's standpoint, the FeliCa up until now and FeliCa inside the cellular phones are basically the same, but in reality, they're very different, right?

Mr. Takizawa:
"Exactly right. Incidentally, at the time i-Mode FeliCa's preview service was announced last year, the phone-oriented specifications were finalized. But how to actually implement the technology inside of phones, such as the antenna position and such, was left to be schemed by the phone makers themselves."

-On i-Mode FeliCa, the memory of the FeliCa chip is divided into "Common Areas" and "Free Areas," right?

Mr. Takizawa:
"Yes. The FeliCa chip memory, which is 5KB by the way, was not decided to have the 'Free Area' by us - that was made by NTT DoCoMo. How to divide the 5KB was decided by DoCoMo. FeliCa Networks manages the 'Common Area,' but as the business model determined in the beginning, this part would be handled by the 'new company,' or FeliCa Networks."

-About the 5KB of FeliCa chip memory, does this mean that loaded applications need to go in this space?

Mr. Takizawa:
"We don't know how much of a capacity is devoted to the 'Free Area' and how much is devoted to the 'Common Area.' However, all of the loaded applications must fit in 5KB. Also, the phone's memory cannot be used as a sort of virtual memory. I cannot say anything about how many applications, or about how the size of applications will vary. But it should be clear that an application such as a point card would be smaller than an application such as electronic money.

It would be hard for me to say that you could fit 10s of large applications inside the chip. But we do plan o­n watching how the market responds; if there are needs for a larger memory area, we will support them. But even if we included a large memory, the costs of leaving the applications there would become higher. Since this kind of service hasn't existed until now, we must probe it."

-FeliCa has been used domestically primarily for commuter passes and electronic money. i-Mode FeliCa will offer different services and applications than what is offered now, right?

Mr. Takizawa:
"We aren't particularly uneasy about this. o­n the contrary, I think we should put out a wider variety. FeliCa is o­nly for transferring data after verification. While it is obvious that depending o­n the service, some will transfer points, or some will transfer money, but the FeliCa standards such as transfer speed have already been finalized - whatever data can be handled will be handled, so I don't see any problems."

-FeliCa is a "highly credible, logical technology."

Much attention is being paid to i-Mode FeliCa, and there aren't many people that feel it would be vaguely insecure. Mr. Takizawa bitterly smiles as he says, "there are many that may say they're uneasy, or frightened, but they are upset without even knowing exactly what they're upset about."

Mr. Takizawa:
"The OS currently used in FeliCa was developed in 1988. In the 16 years since its inception, it has never been defeated. Although there have been over 50 million FeliCa cards shipped including Asia and overseas, there have not been any examples of duplication or scamming. Although I cannot say it is 100% secure, of course, our achievements led to adoption by JR East Japan, and i-Mode FeliCa is no different. I think the hardest part to think about is, for example, what would happen if your phone was stolen and someone attempted to jack your FeliCa information from it.

Although it has been called insecure, rather than the problem being FeliCa itself, I think the problem revolves around prepaid electronic money services, for example - what would happen if you dropped it, or images of accidentally using money come to mind. But since Edy can o­nly store up to 50,000 yen, the risk is about the same as if you were to lose your wallet. While a large issue is the transmission and cooperation aspects of the i-Mode FeliCa phones, the "F900iC" can have its FeliCa locked from a remote location. In the same fashion, there are business people and computer terminals that have ways of securing things. Since FeliCa is a part, security functions such as remote controlled locks cannot be implemented by us. These sorts of features rely o­n computers."

-What happens when there is an incoming mail or phone call when FeliCa features are being used?

Mr. Takizawa:
"There are no problems."

-Are there any insecurities about "clone FeliCa" coming up because some third party would read someone's FeliCa information and copy it?

Mr. Takizawa:
"As I said before, FeliCa is used extensively in Hong Kong, India, Singapore, etc. and there have been no cases of this sort of usage. These are actual results we're talking about here.

The key to FeliCa's security is its OS. While Sony technology people might call it 'practical, impractical,' FeliCa used as we plan o­n will become 'a logical technology.'"

According to an outline of FeliCa o­n a Sony website, while the device is reading/writing and processing data, a new code key is generated for data transmission. This technology is apparently how FeliCa protects against illegal activities such as copying.

-Opting for the internal battery has a positive reason

-Although the cards got power the moment they were put near a reader/writer, i-Mode FeliCa uses the cellular phone's battery for power. What sort of effect would this have o­n the phone's battery if FeliCa were to be used?

Mr. Takizawa:
"In the case of cellular phones, the antenna becomes much smaller than a card, no matter what you do. But since we use the internal battery of the cellular phone, even if the antenna is small, the output has the same specs as the card. Because of this, we can also use FeliCa reader/writers already existing, such as those at JR East. Using the phone's battery also increases convenience for the end user."

Furthermore, according to NTT DoCoMo, if someone owns FOMA phone supporting i-Mode FeliCa, they use applications such as Edy o­n their first phone, and have their FOMA card changed o­n the second phone, applications inside FeliCa will not be affected. When changing units entirely, the services and applications used can be switched over as well.

i-Mode FeliCa is a truly new service that fuses cellular phones and contactless IC technology. And because of this, it is difficult to predict what sort of development it will see. Here at K-Tai Watch, we will continue to collect data o­n all related companies, and present the whole story to you the reader.

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/interview/19481.html