The contactless cards have found an early volume application among the nation's public-transportation systems for ticket sales and other transactions. And a government residential-registry network that debuted this summer is expected to accelerate the adoption of contactless cards.

The Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications launched its Basic Residential Registers Network System in August. Nicknamed Juki Net, the system lets people apply for residency certification at any local government office nationwide. The ministry estimates that 3 million cards will be issued by next March, the end of the current fiscal year.

The system, which assigns a unique 11-digit ID code to each resident, links all existing computers that process residential registration data at local administrative offices. Each computer connects to the system through a firewall and a communications server.

The network itself relies on private links, although in latter phases some information will be accessible on the Internet. Through Juki Net, central and local governments can share information on card holders.

More limited than the U.S. Social Security system or the personal identification number systems used in France and South Korea in terms of the personal information linked to each ID number, the 11-digit personal code stored in each Juki Net IC card can be used to retrieve only very basic data about the card holder, such as the person's name, address, gender and date of birth. The secure data can be accessed at any local office in Japan that's linked to the Juki network. IC cards can be issued by any local office on request, but participation in the card system is not mandatory.

While the personal data is secure, the cards can hold additional application programs to allow local administrative offices to provide a range of services as they see fit.

The government intends to foster the system as the foundation for an information infrastructure that will be the linchpin of the "e-Japan" strategy. That initiative, announced in 2001, seeks to make Japan the most advanced information technology user nation by 2005.

In Juki Net's first implementation phase, the cards will be used mainly to verify identity when administrative offices accept applications for such documents as resident registrations and passports. In the next phase, the ministry intends to make the authentication function accessible over the Internet, expanding the range of transactions enabled by the cards. Contact-card communications functions can be added as an option.

Juki Net uses a proximity contactless IC card in the ISO 14443 Type B standard format. Cards can communicate with readers and writers within a range of of 1 to 20 cm at 106 kbits/second using the 13.56-MHz frequency. Memory capacity of the cards is 32 kbytes or greater.

Practical implementation of the Juki Net system was entrusted to the Local Authorities Systems Development Center, a foundation established in 1970 to promote the computerization of public documentation. The center gives the required specifications to equipment vendors and verifies compatibility. Vendors are afforded a fair amount of freedom to differentiate their designs as long as they maintain basic compatibility with the selected specs. Thus far, 14 vendors have been listed as approved suppliers for the program, according to a spokesman for the center. Each local office contracts with approved vendors.

"ISO 14443 Type B cards will grow for applications in the public sector," buoyed by the adoption of the format for driver's licenses starting around 2005, said Hiroshi Urano, assistant director of Fuji Chimera Research Institute Inc.

The card has an 8-bit RISC CPU and a 4-kbyte memory, and it works in the range of 2 cm to 10 cm at 13.56 MHz. It features a 212-kbit/s transmission rate, twice the rate of ISO 14443 Type B cards, to allow completion of a series of ticket gate operations-including card detection and authentication and data read/ write-within 0.1 second.

The FeliCa format was first adopted in 1997 in Hong Kong, employed in the Octopus cards used by subway, bus and ferry riders. Since then, Sony is said to have shipped about 12 million units of the card to Hong Kong. East Japan Railway Co., the largest railway service in Japan, adopted FeliCa in November 2001 for its Suica card, a contactless replacement for magnetic cards. About 7 million Suica cards are in use, according to an East Japan Railway spokesman.

Sony said it had shipped 38 million FeliCa cards in all, as of the end of June.

Other FeliCa projects are in the works. In November, West Japan Railway-which covers Osaka, Japan's second-largest city-will introduce its Icoca card for used at automated ticket gates. And the Surutto Kansai association of about 50 private railway companies will use the FeliCa format for a card service that will be compatible with West Japan's. While the association's contactless-card rollouts won't occur simultaneously across all member rail companies, several will begin offering IC card service before the year is out.

The association's Pitapa card will enable a postpay system (the acronym stands for "postpay IC for touch and pay"). Sumitomo Mitsui Card Co. Ltd. and Japan Research Institute Ltd., which provide Visa and Mastercard services in Japan, will partner with Surutto Kansai to support and provide collection services for the postpay network.

East Japan Railway is also preparing a common IC card together with other private railway, subway and bus companies in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Currently, different magnetic cards are used by the area's subway and private railway and for bus systems. FeliCa-based cards that are compatible among the three groups are slated to be available in 2006.

These moves should make FeliCa "the de facto standard in the transportation domain in Japan," said Fuji Chimera's Urano. He expects credit- and bank-card functions to be added to the cards.