Vive La France: Orange Bites The NFC Bullet, Plans Nationwide SIM-based Rollout In Home Market

NFC, the technology that can help turn a mobile handset into an instant, superpower payment device, has been long on promise but largely short on delivery. But today, the France Telecom-owned mobile operator Orange took a step that could see some of that potential realized: it has announced?that it will initiate a nationwide deployment of NFC SIM cards across its home market of France, covering 27 million subscribers. Orange says that all new post-paid subscribers will be getting the new SIM, regardless of what handset they have; existing customers will need to request it. What this means is that any NFC-ready device with Orange's new SIM in it can actually be used to make transactions -- as long as a businesses has enabled the service. The GSMA mobile carrier association first endorsed the NFC SIM solution back in November 2011?and this looks to be the first widescale European deployment of that -- although there are other carriers, like China Mobile, who are already offering these elsewhere. Orange, meanwhile, has only been working on local services of NFC services that worked with a limited number of handsets (the UK's QuickTap being one example).

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