“Internet of Moving Things” Startup Eyes U.S. Cities
(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Many transit riders are familiar with onboard WiFi, but as of September, in Porto, Portugal, buses, taxis and even garbage trucks actually act as moving hot spots, supplying Internet access to around 60,000 people each month.
This system, which creator Veniam calls an “Internet of moving things” is a kind of mesh network. Using an onboard device called a NetRider, vehicles communicate with both fixed infrastructure and other vehicles. The startup’s website depicts the widely distributed signals as a vast, city-wide spiderweb, with anyone in range able to log on.
This month, Veniam announced that it had secured $4.9 million in funding, and the Portuguese company definitely has plans for the U.S. Venture Beat reports that Veniam will initially focus on bringing its service to San Francisco, New York City and Austin. (João Barros, one of the company’s founders, wouldn’t confirm those picks.)
“We aim to turn every vehicle into a WiFi hotspot,” says Barros. (Other company founders include Susana Sargento, Roy Russell and Robin Chase of Zipcar.)
According to Barros, one of the system’s biggest upsides is cost. The small, widely distributed boxes are far cheaper for cities to install than more centralized cellular infrastructure. As an article in Government Technology explained earlier this month, it’s a difference of about 85 cents to $15 per gigabyte.
“Veniam’s potential savings may be a big draw for developing nations, highly dependent on mobile Internet access, yet unable to pay for cellular infrastructure — such as cellular towers in overly congested locales,” Jason Shueh wrote.
And because all those synced up vehicles are equipped with sensors, they’re able to collect a vast amount of data. This, of course, is the promise of the so-called Internet of Things, or “IoT,” a buzzy phrase that writers for the Pew Research Internet Projectdefine simply as the “expanding networking of everything and everyone.” But while some see its massive potential for smart, efficiently run city systems, others worry about big-time privacy violations.
Starting with the positives, a paper released by Cisco last year outlined some fascinating uses for Big (City) Data.
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