The creeping ubiquity of Near Field Communication (NFC) comes a little closer today with its deployment at this fortnight’s French Open tennis tournament at Roland-Garros.

Mobile operator Orange will be demonstrating NFC technology on its stand in the Allée Suzanne Lenglen and at other sites within the stadium. Mobile users will be able to pay for shopping, to store their loyalty cards and even to use public transport.

Visitors to the tournament will also be able to test the payment system at the restaurant Les Jardins de Roland-Garros as well as download the Orange Roland-Garros application.

All of which will be tested next Thursday by your correspondent when he attends the semi-finals of the tournament… as a guest of Orange.

I’ll do my best to be as non-partisan as I can but, as I’m sure you all know, there’s no such thing as a free invitation to a marque tennis tournament.

The creeping ubiquity of Near Field Communication (NFC) comes a little closer today with its deployment at this fortnight’s French Open tennis tournament at Roland-Garros.

Mobile operator Orange will be demonstrating NFC technology on its stand in the Allée Suzanne Lenglen and at other sites within the stadium. Mobile users will be able to pay for shopping, to store their loyalty cards and even to use public transport.

Visitors to the tournament will also be able to test the payment system at the restaurant Les Jardins de Roland-Garros as well as download the Orange Roland-Garros application.

All of which will be tested next Thursday by your correspondent when he attends the semi-finals of the tournament… as a guest of Orange.

I’ll do my best to be as non-partisan as I can but, as I’m sure you all know, there’s no such thing as a free invitation to a marque tennis tournament.