| FOR INFORMATION | ||
NTT and Gemplus announce collaborative development for open Smartcard and Information Sharing platform | ||
13th October 1999 NTT, the global information sharing corporate group in Japan, and Gemplus the world's leading provider of smartcard-based solutions announced today a collaborative development program in smartcard and server technology. The cooperation will focus on the technology to manage and deliver applets for value-added service into many types of multipurpose smartcards, including new generation large memory capacity smartcards. The management functions will provide links between smartcards and server through user authentication, secure transactions, anytime-anywhere applications and information download. The two companies share a common vision of the combination of smartcards and networks to ease the access and provide security for on-line and off-line consumer services including, payment, loyalty, mobile Internet, electronic commerce, healthcare, welfare, and remote banking. A pilot program exploiting the result of this cooperation is planned to be launched within 12 months, allowing consumers to load into their personal smartcards the services of their choice, and for service providers to benefit from established technology and infrastructure to deploy new value added services. Both companies have already invested in advanced research and development programs to this aim and will have some of the first fruits to show at Telecom 99 in Geneva. Gemplus will show their PINOCCHIO smartcard project which demonstrates their capacity to manufacture SIM cards containing several megabytes of memory (the current maximum size is a mere 32K bytes), and GemCast a server platform for distribution and management of smartcard applets for current GSM mobile phones. NTT will be exhibiting a wide range of network solution technologies for Global Megamedia Network, electric commerce and mobile communication systems. NTT will also demonstrate it contactless IC card technology for public pay-phones, its electronic cash system and its Intelligent Transferring System. Jun-ichiro Miyazu, president of NTT , said " We are very pleased to be working with Gemplus, on this project which I am confident will bring a new range of consumer services first to Japan and then to other countries". Marc Lassus CEO of Gemplus Associates said "Our current research has proved to be both relevant and complementary to that of NTT. Our cooperation will put both our companies into a leading position in a new aspect of the smartcard industry" | ||
About NTT The NTT group(http://www.ntt.co.jp) is the global information sharing corporate group in Japan. The group provides local, long distance, global and cellular telecommunications services, data communications services and multimedia services. In Japan, the NTT group supplies services to more than 60 millions residential and business customers through a fully digital network. The group also has more than 20 millions cellular telephone subscribers. The group has been providing global end-to-end services under the brand name of Arcstar since Sept. 1997. The group has also been investing in and participating in many telecommunications projects particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. NTT laboratories have been researching and developing its wide range of technologies of network as well as smart card. (R)1999 NTT. NTT is a registered trademark. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. | ||
About Gemplus: Gemplus S.C.A. (www.gemplus.com) is the world's leading provider of plastic and smartcard-based solutions with 37 % market share (by units sold, source: Dataquest 1998). Gemplus sells magnetic stripe cards, memory and microprocessor-based smartcards, smart contactless cards, electronic tags and smart objects. The company designs and markets software, development tools and readers. Gemplus also provides consulting, training and personalization services to deliver the industry's most comprehensive and flexible card-based solutions to its developers, distributors, partners and customers. With sales of over $US648 million in 1998, Gemplus employs more than 4,300 people in ten manufacturing facilities, five R&D centers and 41 sales and marketing offices located in 27 countries around the world. Founded in 1988, Gemplus has successfully implemented portable and secure smartcard-based solutions to simplify applications such as public and wireless communications, financial transactions, loyalty, transportation, education, healthcare, identity, physical access control, pay TV, electronic commerce, Internet security, logical access control and information technology. For more information: www.gemplus.com (R)1999 Gemplus. Gemplus is a registered trademark. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. | ||
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 NTT NEWS RELEASE |