Bus mobile ticketing to hit the UK

Link: Mobile ticketing on the buses – vnunet.com

Bus company Go North East have announced plans to introduce a mobile ticketing service this Autumn.

The service, supplied by IT company Atos Origin, will be a prepaid service – with funds being added via a website. Before getting on the bus, the end user texts a supplied code and gets a barcode ticket in return. When they get on the bus, they just have to show the barcode – or scan it on a special modified ticket machine.

Honest opinion on this? As a long time user of London’s Oyster contactless ticketing system, it’s a lot less hassle than what’s been proposed here. I can top-up my Oyster account in quite a few stores locally, online, or at a tube station. No fiddling around texting and waiting for a barcode to come back just to go 5 minutes down the road. Besides, with Nokia, O2 and Orange already in talks with Transport for London over combining the technology with mobile handsets, I wonder how much mileage is in this?