Cellint is a leading provider of cellular based traffic information solutions. Their systems have been deployed over tens of thousands of km in the US, Europe and Middle East, with excellent results and very satisfied customers. The company was founded in 2005; Cellint is a privately held company with Headquarters near Tel Aviv, Israel and S&M office in KC, US.
Their most basic requirement in handling transportation problems is to collect data: both for proper transportation planning, as well as for real time road management. Traditional solutions include sensors along the roads, which due to their huge cost are scarcely used in Africa.
With no accurate relevant data there is no way to understand the cause of the problem and how can you solve a problem you don’t understand? Alternative solutions for road monitoring by using GPS data are problematic at best due to the sporadic nature of the data: The fact is that on 95% of the roads, 95% of the time, there is no live data available for traffic data collection in such systems. In Africa GPS solutions are facing the additional challenge of limited penetration of Smart phones, so even less data is available.
All of the above led many companies to try using the cellular network as a source of data, by tracking all mobile phones on the road in real time. Although there is a huge amount of the data in the network, the results weren’t better than the GPS aggregators, since each location point in the cellular network is not accurate enough to determine the road on which the phone is traveling on, not to mention speed.
A new solution emerged in the last few years, which finally solved the challenge of collecting area-wide traffic data at sensors quality at a fraction of their cost: using the cellular network data, but assigning GPS coordinates to each data point. The solution is offered by Cellint and is called TrafficSense.
Looking forward, Cellint is in the best position to help congested Urban Africa make the best real time decisions to get the best out of the infrastructure which is available today, and at the same time provide all the required information to best plan for the future, and avoid huge mistakes when planning new roads, new metro lines, etc. All of that can be done in months with minimal resources and no investment in infrastructure is required.. During the last year, Cellint has been participating in many leading international ITS events, such as the ITS World Congress as well as local events in North America, Europe and Asia and maybe soon they will be in Africa as well looking for partners.
Alon Blankstein Cellint, Vice President advises that good decisions are made based on good information. May it be the driver who would like to know the best route or fastest route to his destination, or the road authorities that want to know how to allocate their current resources to best serve the public.
Blankstein also commented on the emerging ITS trends, on the consumer side more and more smart commuters are using more than just one mode of transportation to reach their destination trying to optimize both time, price and maybe other factors like reliability, safety and even environmental friendly factors . This will require not just real time information of all modes of transportation but also the tools to use that information analyze it, provide the right information in timely manner and in the correct medium to the traveler.
Blankstein also commented on the emerging ITS trends, on the smart city side more and more smart municipalities and smart governments are using more cost effective manners to collect and digest traffic information, improving their transportation systems and leveraging this to boost their economy.
Contributor:
Alon Blankstein Cellint
