Anyone who has ridden in a New York City cab recently has no doubt noticed the new touchscreen based information monitors that are now available in some 6,600 New York taxis. They provide passengers with real-time GPS tracking on maps, news information, entertainment, and even credit card payment processing. Today Sprint announced that its EV-DO 3G network is the backbone that powers all of that.
While this isn’t exactly huge news, it’s interesting to see how the mobile networks are being used in non-phone devices. This is what the promise of Sprint’s WiMAX efforts has always been, even though this particular application uses EV-DO. In any case, the taxi system uses Sprint’s VPN solution to ensure that credit card information is transmitted not only quickly, but securely as well. I’ve used the system numerous times in the past couple of months but had no idea that Sprint had anything to do with it – though it certainly makes sense.
I suppose this brings us one step closer to having connectivity from our refrigerators and coffee machines.
You can read the official press release on the Sprint website.
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