News
Issue #2003 - 11 (March 2003)
(Updated Mar. 31, 2003)

APPLICATION SOLUTIONS & APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Finland Tracks Traffic Congestion Using Cell Phone Signals

An experiment to use cell phone signals to track where traffic congestion is occurring has been deemed successful by Finland's Technical Research Center. The Finnish Road Administration and mobile phone firm Radiolinja tracked information about the number of GSM cell phones passing between certain measuring points to deliver to a Web site real-time information about traffic congestion, and the speed of traffic flow. Not only would drivers get information about where congestion is occurring, they could also receive information on how long it would take to travel through an area. To avoid raising privacy concerns, a random number is linked to a phone as it travels through the system. The road administration said it has no way to link the random number to a particular cell phone. (Source: AP) - more info

Source: AP & CTIA

MobileInfo Comments and Advisory:  Equating cellular call density to traffic density is only an approximate measure of traffic. We should continue to rely on ITS (intelligent Transportation Systems) with sensors embedded in roads as a more accurate method of measuring traffic patterns.

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