If Sky Television ever lives up to its name, the concept of the embedded microprocessor Smart Card could get a big boost: when Rupert Murdoch’s UK satellite TV system introduces a subscription service in the autumn, it plans to issue subscribers with Smart Cards to record their usage of the system; according to the Financial Times, the cards have been developed by an Israeli company, News Data Corp, in which News International Plc has a 60% stake; the paper says the cards will be manufactured in the UK by a joint venture with a French company which is not Thomson SA, manufacturer of the signal unscramblers.
