All aboard the broadband bus
by Kelly Stone
In a first for Australian public transport commuters, Adelaide is
offering passengers free onboard internet access, gaming programs,
news feeds and real-time security in a trial of the State’s first
broadband-equipped bus.
The broadband bus has been developed by a coalition of industry partners, with pre-implementation testing of 3G mobile broadband coverage provided by UniSA’s Institute for Telecommunications Research.
Institute Director, Professor Alex Grant, said the i-Commute bus being trialled by the Department of Transport, Energy and Infrastructure (DTEI) for six months, added mobile broadband connectivity to the bus using a 3G data network.
"Passengers can access the internet for free from a laptop or mobile phone," Prof Grant said.
"They can play games, get the current news and receive other localised information on their journey."
The system provides several other valuable services made possible by wireless connectivity.
"The system also has GPS so DTEI knows where the bus is at any point in time," he said.
"The real-time passenger information system provides useful information to passengers on two LCD screens, including accurate estimated time of arrival to the next stop, realtime news feeds provided by the ABC, community information, and time and location based advertising. Real-time route information allows passengers to know where their bus is and when the next bus is going to arrive very accurately."
At a development cost of almost $500,000, i-Commute was developed and funded during the past 18 months by a group of technology companies with the support of the South Australian Government, including MIMP Connecting Solutions, transSpot, Cisco, Adam Internet, Podmo Mobile and Webshield Content Filtering.
MIMP General Manager Allan Aitchison said Adelaide was the first city in Australia to offer real-time route information with free internet access aboard a public transport bus, putting Adelaide on par with world- leading cities including San Francisco, Seoul, Lisbon, Madrid and Hamburg.
UniSA conducted extensive field trials of the 3G mobile broadband network in Adelaide during March 2009.
"We fitted out a vehicle with 3G modems and other test equipment that logged the speed of the network on a continual basis, and not just the speed but also the latency or how much delay there was in the network," Prof Grant said.
"We drove a number of bus routes specified by DTEI, from north to south and through the Adelaide Hills, recording the throughput and latency of two different 3G networks, to make sure that when the system went into the bus, the required speed and the coverage were there."
Prof Grant said the Institute for Telecommunications Research was chosen to conduct the trials because of its strong background in 3G technology and capabilities to conduct a field trial integrating GPS data.
"This was a very interesting project and we got some good results," he said.