NYC taxis go wireless
Written by mobati //
Monday, November 14th, 2005
Topic: wifi
NYC taxis prepare to go wireless with their fleet of 12,766 yeloow cabs. Displaying electronic maps, sports scores, news headlines, flight times, and movie listings on a touch sensitive screen and credit card swipe spot.
New York city’s 12,766 yellow cabs are scheduled to get wireless connections next year that will track drivers and help alert them to waiting customers. New York wifi taxi riders will be able to pay by credit card, to check flight data, or to buy movie tickets. The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, after gathering ideas from 70 companies, such as Bank of America Corp. and Sprint Nextel Corp., may announce this month the companies selected to add the services.
Customers will soon find a wifi touch-sensitive screen with a slot to swipe credit cards on the bullet-proof partition between the front and back seats. The screen will display a trip’s fare and tip options, and riders will pay with a swipe and a finger.
The monitor also may display an electronic map, sports scores, news headlines, flight times, and movie listings, and may allow hotel and air-travel check-in, said a Taxi and Limousine Commission spokesman, Allan Fromberg.
With a satellite link, cabs will boast global positioning systems that monitor every pick-up and drop-off, ridding drivers of the paper ”trip sheets” that they now fill in. It will also make it easier for customers to retrieve lost property because of the electronic record of where they were dropped off.
Outfitting taxis with back-seat screens and card-processing systems may cost as much as $4,000 per car
