Consumer RFID: I’ll Take Two Tickets To Paradise

Back in the late 80s, in the first two years of the now popular Toronto Film Festival, I used to call in sick to work and go line up for movie tickets (something I now regret, of course). But the bloody lines were so long even back then that I never once caught a single film. To this day, I’ve yet to actually attend the festival. Well there’s likely little hope of that happening now, at least until I move back there. But if I”m lucky, the theatres will use SK Telecom’s U-theater RFID-enabled ticketing service. An RFID tag is attached to the movie posters of each film currently showing. RFID-enabled cell phones can purchase tickets, which will be confirmed by SMS (Short Message Service), by being waved close to the poster’s tag. You can also download movie clips to your phone from the poster, presumably using Bluetooth. RFID is also being used in a similar way in hospitality. This is all part of an increasing trend towards mobile and consumer use of RFID.