Ultrasonic Sound Waves Are the New Paper Boarding Pass?

Info sign at international airport - Directions for check in and boarding gates - Registrations and custom at terminal connections

An Ohio-based tech firm believes that sound waves could hold the solution to nearly all of the current pitfalls associated with using a smartphone instead of a paper boarding pass at the airport.

When everything works exactly like it is supposed to, using a mobile device at the airport rather than printing a boarding pass is considerably more convenient and much less stressful than trying to keep track of a paper ticket, but when technological glitches occur, it can make even the most tech-savvy air traveler long for the thick card stock airline tickets of yesteryear. A low phone battery, a sudden loss of connectivity or even a technology-averse TSA screener will turn the dream of paperless travel into something of a nightmare in mere seconds.

Lisnr, a Cincinnati-based startup, believes it has solved nearly every single issue associated with paperless travel. The tech firm uses a proprietary sound wave technology to securely transmit data (including boarding passes, concert tickets and other credentials) between devices using only speakers and microphones those devices are in most cases already equipped with. No, this isn’t a return to the dial-up modems of the 1990s – in fact, the company says, the near-ultrasonic sound waves employed by the technology are in nearly most cases inaudible to the human ear.

According to Lisnr, the sound wave tickets use less battery than any of the current methods of paperless ticketing. Company officials say that because airlines rely on QR codes – even for paper boarding passes – a sound wave boarding pass is actually more secure than even a traditional printed airline ticket.

“Every time you use a ticket or at an airline, they’ve chosen a QR code,” Lisnr co-founder Rodney Williams told CNBC upon his company being named to the network’s prestigious Disruptor 50 List this week. “But it’s a fraudulent vehicle. I can screenshot it. I can share it. It’s one of the reasons why you still have to use your ID.”

The company says that the technology performed flawlessly during live trials conducted in partnership with Ticketmaster. The use of the Lisnr system reportedly reduced ticket fraud to an unheard of “zero percent” in a recent case study.

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