Europe Gets Serious About EPC

Europe is well ahead of the rest of the world in using HF systems. Its cities have led the way in using RFID transponders in tickets for railways and buses, and its ski resorts use HF tags in lift tickets. Many companies in Europe use HF to track assets, such as returnable transport items, or work in process. But applications that required a read range of longer than about a meter (3 feet) were, quite literally, out of reach. UHF gives European companies another tool they can use, and many attendees saw just how some of the presenters are already using it.

There is still some skepticism in Europe about just how much value the EPCglobal Network will provide. That's true in the United States and Asia, as well. But the concept of the EPCglobal Network—which is really a set of standards for sharing EPC data securely over the Internet—is catching on. I attended a session by Michael Young, senior director of technology for Afilias Global Registration Services, in which he explained the network and how his company is using it to offer discovery services—a means for looking up information about products associated with an EPC.

Not only was the session packed, but also the questions were specific. One person asked about publishing and subscription standards, while another asked about how a user would find information about a product if the owner of that product published information to a different discovery service (the answer: the service is set up as a peer-to-peer network, so one service can query another).

When I spoke with Joe White of Symbol Technologies at the show, he mentioned that Symbol's business in Europe was growing at a nice clip. He said it wasn't just big orders from a few companies, but engagements with a large number of companies, which come from a broad array of industries.

Europe is not going to ramp up overnight—and neither is the United States, though U.S. mandates are driving up the volume of tags purchased to some degree. New technologies require an incubation period. With new Gen 2 UHF equipment, coming standards for HF technology and new standards for sharing EPC data over the network, it's clear that Europe won't be far behind the United States in adoption. In fact, it might not be long before Europe and Asia are leading the global adoption of RFID technologies.

Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below.