Nokia said its Here mapping and navigation unit is evaluating the rollout of a cellular network in the Netherlands as part of the businesses' Cooperative Intelligent Transportation System (C-ITS) for connected vehicles.
Here is collaborating with the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment to assess the deployment of a connected car safety network using commercial 3G and LTE (4G) infrastructure, location cloud technology, and Here's data analytics systems. The company said the infrastructure would provide an efficient, low latency, data exchange mechanism to improve road safety by providing targeted information on road conditions to drivers via smartphones and other devices.
Ogi Redzic, SVP of Automotive at Here, said the C-ITS "can be built on existing Dutch networks, meaning that it wouldn't cost the earth, could be quickly rolled out across the whole country, and would bring benefits to citizens relatively fast."
Here plans to offer an initial demonstration of its C-ITS technology in the Netherlands during the first half of 2016 as part of a government programme called "Beter Benutten" to optimise the efficiency of the country's transportation networks.
Redzic said the Netherlands "is regarded as a C-ITS trailblazer in Europe".
Caspar de Jonge, project manager for Beter Benutten, explained that the Dutch government sees an opportunity to leverage widespread smartphone ownership and growing vehicle connectivity "to improve road safety and traffic flow in the next few years."
The Dutch government wants to "start deploying a road user messaging system that enables information to be gathered, processed and then distributed to the relevant road-users with quality, accuracy and at sub-second delivery rates," during 2016.
Here's pending Dutch demonstration builds on a small-scale trial of its C-ITS on LTE networks conducted in Finland, which the company said proved the effectiveness of 4G cellular connections as a means of distributing notifications on traffic conditions and potential road hazards.
That trial was run by VTT -- the Technical Research Centre of Finland -- and formed part of a broader pilot named NordicWay, which aims to trial C-ITS on roads running through Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
Announcing the completion of the trial in October, Here noted that the ability to utilise commercial 4G networks was a key step towards deploying C-ITS, and removed the need to install additional roadside infrastructure such as dedicated short range communications (DSRC) equipment.
For more:
- see this Here announcement
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