con- venience to increasingly connected digital consumers, allowing new genres of interactions with interactive advertising posters and kiosks, instant ticketing, and the transmission of audio, pictures, and video. NFC technology is showing tremendous promise for transforming consumer commerce, connectivity, and content consumption, enhancing end-user experiences Chapter 15 WMANs, WLANs, and WPANs while redefining communications, content, and payment business models. NFC is expected to be deployed beginning in 2007, first in wireless handsets and then in other kinds of consumer electronics, from PCs to cameras, printers, set-top boxes, and the growing range of smart devices. The success of NFC depends on open, interoperable, standards-based NFC environments. To help in this quest, the NFC Forum (www.nfc-forum.org) is add- ing fuel to the technology's expansion. The NFC Forum was founded by Nokia (www.nokia.com), Philips (www.philips.com), and Sony (www.sony.com) in 2004, and since then, dozens of companies have signed up for the industry group. The NFC Forum now boasts more than 60 collaborating members, including wireless carriers, handset OEMs, application developers, payment processors, infrastruc- ture providers, content owners, card issuers, and banks and merchants. NFC is standardized in a number of ISO, Ecma International, and ETSI standards, provid- ing for maximum flexibility as the technology seeks compatibility with existing devices, especially smart cards. NFC, a short-range, contactless communications protocol, enables easy-to-use, secure connectivity between devices. It can also be used to configure and initiate other wireless network connections, including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It is a wireless technology that operates in the globally available and unregulated 13.56MHz quency band, over a typical distance of a few centimeters, but with a maximum working distance of 5 to 6.5 feet (1.5 to 2 m). It supports three data transfer rates: 106Kbps, 212Kbps, and 424Kbps. By using magnetic field induction, NFC