Kista Science City to host NFC access control pilot

Staff, researchers and students are to pilot test a system that allows keys to doors, meeting rooms and video conferencing facilities to be sent over the air to participants’ NFC phones.

Kista Science City
KEY TEST: Kista Science City

A six month NFC access control pilot is to begin this month at Kista Science City in Sweden.

Researchers, students and staff taking part in the project will be able to use both contactless cards and NFC phones to access the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Labs premises at Kista’s Electrum building, near Stockholm. Participants will be able to use their NFC phones to access entrance doors as well as meeting rooms and video conferencing facilities.

The technology being used to deliver the pilot includes an NFC-based access control system developed by Swedish start-up Telcred and Ericsson IPX‘s cloud-based trusted service manager (TSM) solution, enabling access control credentials to be sent over-the-air to participants’ NFC phones.

“With this solution, granting access rights to students and researchers becomes very simple,” says Ericsson’s Richard Anell. “Time limited access rights are sent via the mobile network straight to the visitors’ NFC phones through Ericsson’s TSM.

“It is convenient and flexible, as a visiting researcher from another country could potentially receive a digital ‘ticket’ straight to their phone granting access to the facilities for a limited time and to predefined areas — even before he or she arrives.”

“It is a breakthrough that staff as well as students will be given the opportunity to get hands on experience of one of the most exciting new mobile technologies, NFC, in their daily activities here at EIT ICT Labs Stockholm,” adds EIT ICT Labs‘s Gunnar Landgren. “We get a lot of long and short term visitors and having a flexible, simple access solution is a necessity.”

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