dailywireless.org » Cell Carpooling in France

Cell Carpooling in France

One of the three major cellphone operators in France, SFR, has created the first carpooling service dedicated to 350,000 students from 28 campus in the Paris region.

The aims of this new carpooling service is to provide the students with home-to-school trips and promote “sustainable mobility”. The service is available through the website (www.covoiturage-campus.com) and from mobile phones. Students can find passengers or a driver at anytime from their cellphones.

Already available via Vodafone Live! for SFR customers, the service will be fully accessible to all cellphone users starting mid-February 2008.

Students do not even need to enter their starting point, the system knows their location. Subscribers to other phone operators will have to send a textmessage including the word TECOVOITURAGE to 30130, and they will receive a link to access the carpooling website.

Since 2000, residents in Lyon, France, have been able to use their Técély RFID-enabled transit passes to pay bus, tramway and Metro fares, says RFID Journal. Now those same prepaid smart cards can be used to rent bikes from 175 locations across the city and its suburbs. More than 2,000 rental bicycles are available to be leased and returned across a dense network of bicycle racks placed every 300 meters or so, using a Técély pass or specially created prepaid smart cards.

Velov, the company behind its deployment, says the bikes are already being well used. “It’s a big success because 30,000 persons use it, and each bike is rented 10 to 12 times per day. The system isn’t expected to be profitable. The aim is not to make money, but to promote the use of the bike in the city,” says Agathe Albertini, communications director at outdoor advertising company JCDecaux, based in Paris.

When a customer uses the machine to buy a pass or add credit to a vélo’v or Técély smart card, he or she must go to a kiosk to swipe the card.

The kiosk will provide a code number and the number of the bike rack for the bike issued. The customer then enters that code number to select that bike and unlock it from its rack.

RFID tags might also be handy for enabling library users to check out $100 laptops, too. Alternatively, CyberAngel, in partnership with Skyhook Wireless can triangulate a stolen computer’s exact location rather than just the IP address of the Wi-Fi router to which it is connecting.

In related Location Based Services news:

Sprint has announced its Family Locator service will now be available on all Web-enabled Sprint phones, an industry first. Parents on the go now can use any Web-enabled Sprint phone to locate their loved ones with Sprint Family Locator (FAQ).
The service costs $9.99 per month with unlimited location requests for up to four phones and access to the service from a PC and any Web-enabled Sprint phone. More than 100 Sprint phones can be located by the service, including all currently available Sprint phones.
GeoVector’s unique GPS-based technology simplifies local searches, allowing users to point their mobile device toward objects of interest to access information, images and advertising. Users can “point and click” with their mobile phone the way a computer user navigates using a mouse. It was nominated for the Ground Breaker Award by the Service Providers Forum of the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley. GeoVector-enabled phones are now widely used throughout Japan via the KDDI network.