With over 16 million RFID-embedded tickets for sale, the Beijing Olympics represents one of the biggest RFID implementations to date – an unprecedented opportunity that is sure to boost its profile and generate more business opportunities for this anti-counterfeiting technology.

The Beijing Olympics could very well be a counterfeiter’s paradise: Two hundred eighty thousand athletes, referees, journalists and other workers from more than 200 countries. About five million foreign tourists and 120 million domestic visitors. Seven million spectators at various venues. The statistics reveal the immense scope of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing – and underscore the urgent need to protect against counterfeit tickets and other Olympic-related products as well as track food and beverage safety from production to consumption. This is, after all, in China – home to everything counterfeit, from fake Pradas to fake pharmas.

But to everyone’s pleasant surprise, the emerging star of this year’s Olympiad is RFID (radio frequency identification) technology. For the first time ever, 16 million RFID-embedded tickets will be sold during the games – with tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies embedded with a microchip containing the ticket holder’s photograph, passport details, address, e-mail and telephone numbers.

China has developed some of the world’s most advanced RFID technology and its use in this year’s Olympics is unprecedented. RFID has been found extremely valuable for automatic identification in controlled environments such as toll roads or security access, and it is expected to be similarly effective in food and beverage tracking at the Olympics. But using RFID in ticketing is not just a large-scale implementation, but also a broader one involving tickets, gate readers, software and service.

Another RFID development that’s very much in evidence at the Olympics, according to an article by Elizabeth Millard in aimglobal.org, is the ongoing collaboration between between vendors from different parts of the world – partnerships focused on providing end-to-end solutions for customers. For example, the RFID-embedded tickets are courtesy of ASK TongFang, a joint venture between ASK SA (France) and Tsinghua Tongfang Limited that designs, produces and sells RFID labels products. The tickets’ anti-counterfeiting security features – another level of protection – are provided by China Banknote, a legal tender producer.

Not everyone is sold on the Olympic’ RFID implementation. Australian security expert Roger Clarke, whose Xamax Consultancy in Canberra advises businesses on online security and identity authentication, insists that recognizing individuals who truly pose danger cannot be done on the basis of their identity. He also said that the advantages of RFID chips in tickets could backfire in terms of inaccurate data, ticket holders mixing up tickets and the possibility for identity theft. While a basic RFID system could expose the data to easy theft, a more secure but complex system with encrypted data could mean chaos at the gate.

There is also, of course, the issue of privacy. RFID was tried two years ago in soccer’s World Cup in Germany, in which people doubted whether the data in the tickets would be completely deleted.

But there are others too who are fans of the system, including Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang who attended the World Cup game and is confident that Beijing’s technology is better, and Xu Chaoying, a leading RFID expert in China, who also backs the technology and says any potential problems could be easily fixed.

The bottom line, as far as many are concerned, is not just how RFID could make a counterfeit-free Olympics possible but, more important, is what its success bodes for the future. According to Millard, implementing an RFID system similar to what’s tracking food safety in the Olympics can record not just where the food shipment is at any moment but also its temperature in real time – a benefit for pharmaceuticals as well.

Also, success in large-scale implementation of RFID—embedded tickets (such as in the Olympics) will make it useful in other even bigger events and in additional applications where ID authentication is required.

RFID technology – revolutionizing the way companies do business, and countries do Olympiads.