Blog Archives
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Why Sharing Information on Innovation is a Good Thing
By Jim Baker - Wednesday January 11, 20122012 starts off with the blitzkrieg of consumer technology that is the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Top of the bill this year is a slew of smart devices supporting 4G LTE, destined to be the wide area cellular network technology to replace all others. With Verizon and AT&T LTE already deployed in 190 markets and 26 markets respectively, Sprint is hurrying to upgrade its Clearwire-based WiMAX infrastructure to support LTE in 10 markets by mid-2012. I have been using a Samsung Galaxy Nexus LTE smartphone on Verizon and have experienced download speeds of 28Mbps, so there's no doubt it's a sea change for network capability. Indeed Verizon's faster-than-planned rollou t of LTE is the quickest mass deployment of any cellular... -
All Aboard the Connected Train
By Jim Baker - Thursday June 16, 2011Last week saw the 6th annual Train Communications Systems conference held in London, where train operating companies (TOCs), integrators and vendors gathered to discuss the latest developments in wireless communications on passenger rail. Organized by rail consultants BWCS , the event has quickly become an important one, high profile enough to attract participants from all over the world, including Amtrak and San Francisco’s Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority ( CCJPA ). The venue was the stunning $1.3 billion redevelopment of St. Pancras Station in North London, a Victorian Gothic masterpiece resplendent in brick, steel and glass, and surely one of the world’s most impressive rail terminals. Passenger Wi-Fi drove the... -
Crowdsourcing Ideas for Connected Vehicles
By Jim Baker - Thursday May 12, 2011Back in August 2010, Unwired covered the Department of Transport (DOT) IntelliDrive initiative that plans to create a wireless network to connect vehicles, municipal infrastructure and consumer hand-held devices using dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) in the 5.9GHz band. There has been disappointingly little progress toward widespread adoption of DSRC in the 10 years since the spectrum was allocated for intelligent transportation (ITS) applications. Pilots and schemes rolled out by regional authorities have focused on collision avoidance and fare collection, but failed to ignite an explosion of innovative ideas within the developer community. The diagram below shows the DOT’s original vision of DSRC used between... -
RF Planning for Ground Transportation
By Jim Baker - Thursday April 14, 2011Some years ago I was involved in building out a large wide area wireless network in the South East of the UK, delivering wireless broadband services to rural areas underserved by wireline technology such as DSL. Before any physical deployment could take place, it was vital to identify where multi-sector base stations had to be placed in order to provide sufficient RF coverage of the target areas, and how these locations could be linked together with point-to-point connections for backhaul. This RF coverage planning stage enables the network operator to understand infrastructure requirements in terms of location and cost, but also to predict throughput and capacity, and mitigate dead zones due to obstructions by landscape topography... -
Going Wireless in Miami
By Jim Baker - Thursday March 31, 2011Arriving in Miami to attend the annual APTA TransITech conference this week, one of the first things I noticed outside my hotel was a local bus wrapped in graphics promoting on-board passenger Wi-Fi. Miami-Dade Transit (MDT) launched the free Wi-Fi service in late 2009 as part of the Wireless Miami-Dade County Initiative, a revitalization plan driven by Major Carlos Alvarez that includes free Wi-Fi in parks and on airport shuttles. To date, free Wi-Fi has been extended to the Metrobus 95 Express service, and four Metrorail commuter cars. According to the city, the Wi-Fi has been well received by transit customers with more than 100,000 unique users since the service was launched. Interestingly, the in-vehicle initiative has been paid... -
Positive Train Control On Track for 2015
By Jim Baker - Wednesday March 16, 2011The 2008 Rail Safety Improvement Act requires that new positive train control (PTC) collision avoidance systems be deployed by railroad operators by the end of 2015, on all main lines used to transport passengers or materials that are hazardous through inhalation. Existing safety systems use spaced, track-side equipment to determine train location within a block of track, and a relatively simplistic colored-light notification system for drivers. PTC introduces continuous GPS-based location and speed tracking, with more sophisticated onboard wireless technology for enforcing movement authority from a centralized control center, wherever the vehicle may be. PTC will be inherently more reliable, and offer greater real-time functionality than... -
Transit Helps Drive the Wireless Agenda
By Jim Baker - Wednesday March 2, 2011My diary is beginning to look pretty full with conference events over the next few months; the 2011 season is getting well underway. As I begin to pack my bags, I thought I’d take a moment to review what’s coming up at the intersection of the mass transit and wireless sectors during March, in an attempt to better understand how public transport is perceived and represented as a market opportunity in the wireless community. IWCE 2011 – March 7-11, Las Vegas, Nev. March kicks off with the annual International Wireless Communications Expo ( IWCE ) in sunny Las Vegas. Originally a two-way radio conference with its roots in public safety, IWCE has grown organically to include a wide range of topics, including WAN infrastructure, M2M, 4G... -
Hey ERIC, what's wrong with Transit and Public Safety?
By Jim Baker - Thursday February 17, 2011In August 2010, the FCC invited nominations for participation in the Emergency Response Interoperability Center ( ERIC ) Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC). ERIC was set up last April by the FCC to establish a technical and operational framework for interoperability of public safety networks using the 700MHz band, with input from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice among others. The purpose of PSAC would be to recommend requirements and procedures for nationwide interoperability, security and reliability, as well as suggesting ways to strengthen collaboration between communication service providers and public safety entities for response procedures during emergencies. Given the important role that mass... -
NFC - The Mass Transit Payment Revolution
By Jim Baker - Thursday February 3, 2011The web is humming this week with news that Apple is planning to embed technology in the next generation iPhone that will enable contactless payments. The combination of built-in Near Field Communication ( NFC ) technology and credit card information in iTunes would turn the phone into a ‘virtual wallet’, and possibly herald the decline of plastic payment cards. In addition to cardless payments, NFC could help deliver targeted, location-based advertising to the phone user and provide a whole new revenue stream to the California-based consumer electronics giant, which recently patented NFC functionality within its products. [caption id="attachment_691" align="alignright" width="270" caption="Pay By Phone where you see this... -
Connected Transportation - Vehicles, Passengers, Cameras
By Jim Baker - Thursday January 20, 2011Last week in Detroit, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse addressed the Detroit Economic Club explaining how Sprint intends to leverage its 3G and 4G wireless networks to bring ‘significant environmental, safety and operational benefits’ to the transportation industry. Through a Connected Transportation initiative, Hesse outlined a machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions strategy that would create products and services for mass transit operators and public safety organizations to improve driver performance, increase public safety and enhance fleet management logistics. By using such wireless technology, Hesse said, accident reduction of 5 percent in a 100-vehicle fleet could bring about six fewer accidents each year. That’s a compelling...
