Intelligent Transport Systems - Telenor

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oping the service with regard to positioning of
the user and user profiles. They also offer different
SMS services, e.g. road information regarding
specific roads in cooperation with the countrywide
radio station P4, Telenor Mobil, and
The Public Roads Administration.
Other initiatives such as Politiet.net collect and
transmit traffic information to and from road
users via SMS.
Hardware and Software Providers
Hardware providers include manufacturers of
portable and in-car equipment. The trend in the
car industry is that the car manufacturers are
including basic telematic equipment in the cars.
However, there will be a competition between
built-in and portable devices, because the lifetime
of a car is much longer than that of personal
digital equipment. Types of hardware include:
• GPS
• SIM cards
• Screens and terminals (PDA, mobile phone,
DSRC tags)
• Car Audio / Video / Entertainment system
• Navigation systems
• Sensors
Norwegian HW suppliers like Q-free, Polydisplay
and SensoNor are direct or indirect players
on the ITS arena. Q-Free delivers dedicated
short-range communications (DSRC) equipment
for the international ITS market. Their main
business as of today is automatic toll-road payment,
but the Q-Free system has possibilities for
several value-added services.
Hardware, software and consultancy companies
like Microsoft, HP and Accenture develop central
service platforms for delivering mobile content.
The platforms can have different modules
such as content management, authentication,
payment, e-mail, etc. There are no specific
Norwegian initiatives, but important players
are represented in Norway.
The Microsoft automotive solutions are based on
Windows CE and the portability features of this
operating system (OS). The Microsoft .NET and
the Windows CE platform enable the building of
a distributed architecture. The implementation
can use a number of different communication
media for local or remote interactions [9].
Standardisation Organizations
The standards for telematics are not yet settled,
but a number of professional and industrial
bodies are formed in relation to the automotive
industry, in order to define and promote standards.
A few of them are briefly described
below. There is no large Norwegian activity in
this area, except ARKTRANS, which is a project
for establishing a multi-modal information standard
with respect to transportation.
IDB Forum is a trade association for chip
designers and car component manufacturers.
IDB is short for ITS data bus. IDB Forum promotes
IEEE 1394 firewire as an alternative to
link-different devices on an ITS bus in the car.
They promote different interfaces for the interconnection
with the bus structure, e.g. Blue-
Tooth, and work in close corporation with
AMI-C (see below) [10].
MOST was initiated by a few car manufacturers:
Audi, BMW, DaimlerChrysler and OASIS SiliconSystems
in Europe. They also work in close
cooperation with AMI-C. MOST will use a plastic
fiber-optical ring structure in the car instead
of the traditional wirering [11].
OSGi’s members include leading service and
content providers, infrastructure and network
operators, software developers, gateway and
set-up box suppliers, consumer electronics
and wired and wireless device suppliers, and
research institutions. The OSGi members are
cooperating to define and promote open specifications
for the network delivery of managed services
to remote systems, including gateway software
for use in cars. This will enable the distribution
and installation of new software packages
(JAVA) to deliver services and content directly
from the provider to the end user. In this context,
a clear line is drawn between the service provider
(SP), content provider (CP), and the network
operator (NO) [12].
AMI-C is an organisation initiated by Fiat, Ford
Motor Company, GM, Honda, Nissan, PSA Peugeot
Citroën, Renault, Toyota and their component
suppliers. They aim at creating consensus
on common requirements for information and
entertainment systems in cars. Besides the cooperation
with some of its peer organisations,
AMI-C also cooperates with ERTICO – the EU
ITS initiative [13].
The multimedia car platform (MCP) is a project
preparing the inclusion of a PC platform in the
car. The main part of the platform is from the
multimedia home platform (MHP) specification
and thus links to the digital-broadcasting industry
for video and audio (DVB/DAB) [14].
Related Research Activities
ITS Oslo was a cooperation project between
public authorities, private companies and R&D
bodies aiming to improve transport and traffic in
the Oslo area by means of ICT. They identified
several business opportunities within ITS:
Telektronikk 1.2003