Admission Tickets as Text Messages

lee1 writes to tell us that InfoWorld is reporting that Smartmachine and their partner Skidata have developed a new way to allow customers to purchase and receive tickets to events. The new ticketing system allows users to "have a ticket sent to their mobile phone via SMS (Short Message Service) in the form of a 2D (two-dimensional) bar code. At the gate, they slide their mobile phone display showing the bar code by a bar code reader." The new technology also claims to help combat the counterfeit, pilferage, and repeat use that can be such a problem for paper tickets.

Like public transport in finland

[slart42]

I've seen the same system in use for public transport tickets in Helsinki. People send an sms to some number, and the fare is deducted from their phone bill. As a proof of purchase the get a text message, which can be shown to the conductor on ticket controls..

Old news in Korea

[neoshmengi]

The Koreans have been doing this for years. To promote it they gave you a discount if you used the cell phone technique.

It makes a lot of sense. It's convenient to order the tickets, also via cell phone, and then you don't have to wait in line. And everyone there has a cell phone.

Funfact: In South Korea when you buy a movie ticket, you can buy a particular seat, like at a sports game.

Re:What?

[Bassman59]

How does this combat counterfieting, pilfering and repeat usage? Are they saying a txt message is harder to generate than a realistic looking ticket?? Or a cell phone is harder to steal? Or that they're going to rip your cell phone in half once you pass through the gate? I can see some convenience advantages but I really don't understand that statement.

Presumably, the "tickets" are generated uniquely by some mechanism that's "difficult" to hack. And once you go through the turnstile, your "ticket" is scanned and the database to which the scanner is connected marks it as used. This is no different from paper tickets with barcodes that are scanned at the gate.

-a

This was tried in India for a Cricket match

[GillBates0]

...back in 2004: Hi-tech ticketing for India-Australia Test [oneindia.com]

FTA:

The tickets would be delivered directly to their mobile phones. At the venue, they only need to place their phones on the sensor installed at the gates for entering the stadium. Spice Telecom and Karnataka State Cricket Association, after their "successful" and ongoing joint venture of Future Strokes, have again come together to launch the Mobile Ticketing in association with ConvergeLabs, a Spice Telecom release said.

Re:Like public transport in finland

[de_valentin]

The real advantage for the average concert fan is that it makes it a lot harder for someone to buy all the tickets and go and sell them online for twice the normal value which I know is a major problem in Belgium and the Netherlands. As long as you can't just send the sms to the next guy.

Re:And they'll pass the cost savings on to...

[mottie]

Ticketmaster actually charges MORE for you to print your own tickets. How ridiculous is that? It's cheaper to go to their counter, use their clerk's time, and use their ink/paper.. I didn't realize that it cost so much to send PDFs out by email. They must be using Adobe Acrobat Professional or something..

Re:Combat counterfeit?

[truthsearch]

I know that. I don't disagree at all. Yet counterfeiters are still able to print unused valid unique IDs (as barcodes) on paper tickets. Therefore they will be able to do the same on a cell phone.

What they really need...

[Peldor]

What they really need is a second barcode I can scan for a full refund if I walk out in the first half-hour because the movie is complete crap. Or the sound system is hosed. Or the theatre is populated by talking idiots. Or any of the other myriad reasons people don't like wagering $20 trying to get a little entertainment at a movie these days.

Re:Plan B

[djtack]

Not likely to work, imagine 50,000 tickets, and a 16-byte bar code. That gives a 50000/2**128 chance to guess one at random. If you could scan a hundred codes per second, it would take 2**128/50000/3600/24/365/100 = 2.2e+24 years to get one right, which is about 160 trillion times the age of the known universe.

Re:Plan B

[CharlieHedlin]

Texas Motor speedway uses paper tickets with barcodes. They scan on entrance and exit to allow readmission. I am fairly certain I could take a color copy of a ticket and get right in, or even copy the barcode to a blank piece of paper. I have always had season tickets, but I believe they even offer an email delivery option for the tickets now.

The barcodes apear to be randomly generated and of sufficient length to stop anyone from brute force hacking when the validation is checked by a person standing with a PDA pressing the button on each read.

Before they started this system I lost my tickets. They will issue vouchers for season ticket holders in this event, and aparently they recorded the numbers of all the stubs collected after the event. I was told if my tickets came through I would get a bill for the duplicates.

The bar codes were on the tickets before the system was in place. What puzzled me was that it was on the main ticket, and not the stub that was collected. Now that they scan on entry they no longer collect the stubs.

It seems like the cell phone and barcodes is only a small step from the above, which has been tested and worked very will at events with attendance of nearly 250k.

Re:Old news in Korea

[TheRaven64]

Well that's clearly a silly system. If you book a specific seat in advance, then how are they going to make you sit through the trailers and ads? Turning up in time to get a good seat is about the only incentive they have at the moment.

For the record, in the UK it depends on the cinema. My local one only rarely assigns seating (RotS had assigned seats, I can't think of anything else that did) and most of the time I have been there only about 20% of seats have been taken when I've arrived about ten minutes late (and missed the ads, and some of the trailers).

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