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Driving the Information Superhighway

Private automobiles and taxicabs will feature Internet access starting next year in select areas of Japan.

Kuriko Miyake, IDG News Service

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A joint project between the Japanese government, the private sector, and a Japanese university is to run trials involving 1700 taxis and private cars networked via the Internet, the project team says.

The group is made up of researchers from Keio University in Japan and Toyota Motor, NEC, and automobile device maker Denso, and is sponsored by the Japanese government. It was set up in April and aims to promote the use of the Internet as a communication infrastructure for automobile service markets, says Kimiko Ishikawa, a spokesperson for the Internet Intelligent Transport Systems research group at Keio University.

The three-month trials will be held in western Japan and in the metropolitan areas of Tokyo between January and March 2002.

The trials will provide information to taxi drivers and their customers using the Internet ITS. Drivers on the move can communicate via the Internet with the office, and their customers can browse city guide information in the car. There will be approximately 1600 taxis using the services, Ishikawa says.

In the Tokyo metropolitan areas, around 70 car drivers will be offered the services, Ishikawa says. The trials will mainly focus on the Internet information service provided at several gas stations and direct settlement services for payment at some parking lots.

The services will be carried to the vehicles wirelessly by DSRC (dedicated short range communications) radio communication systems, according to a group statement.

An unspecified number of the vehicles in each area will be using Internet Protocol version 6, a technology the ITS project team has been promoting for "peer to peer" connections of every Internet vehicle in the future. IPv6 allows data to be collected on weather and road conditions, by monitoring and detecting each car via the Internet. Through the trails, the team hopes to build the foundation for vendors to develop and commercialize applications for the Internet ITS, according to the project team.

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