Skip to main content

Mobile monitoring for Japan’s traffic jams

NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile carrier, will use location data from its 61.5 million subscriber devices to build a platform that monitors traffic conditions across the country. DoCoMo said it will use its access to massive amounts of location data to build a cloud platform of traffic information on which services can be built. The company will target individual consumers with products like navigation and drive recording services, and corporate clients such as car insurance companies with traffic monitor
May 14, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
7342 NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile carrier, will use location data from its 61.5 million subscriber devices to build a platform that monitors traffic conditions across the country.

DoCoMo said it will use its access to massive amounts of location data to build a cloud platform of traffic information on which services can be built. The company will target individual consumers with products like navigation and drive recording services, and corporate clients such as car insurance companies with traffic monitoring and analysis.

The company is to invest US$500 million to take a seven per cent share in struggling Japanese electronics manufacturer Pioneer as part of the effort. Pioneer is a major manufacturer of car navigation products, and already uses DoCoMo's networks for wireless services in its systems. The firms will aim to begin rolling out new services together from this year.

Pioneer recently announced a new car navigation system it will launch this summer that automatically snaps images at popular driving spots and shares them among drivers in real-time to provide information on road conditions.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Ertico weaves tunnel visions into the ‘big picture’
    April 7, 2017
    As he takes the wheel at Ertico - ITS Europe, Jacob Bangsgaard talks to ITS International about the challenges and opportunities facing the organisation and the ITS industry. Ertico - ITS Europe’s new CEO, Jacob Bangsgaard, is no stranger to the organisation having spent five years there before moving to the FIA (Federation Internationale de l’Automobile) in 2006. Four years later he became director general of the FIA’s Region I (EMEA), which represents more than 100 mobility clubs, and in 2012 he joined Er
  • Cars reinvented: huge new opportunities and dangers, says IDTechEx
    December 2, 2016
    The new IDTechEx report, Electric Car Technology and Forecasts 2017-2027 finds that the biggest change in cars for one hundred years is now starting. It is driven by totally new requirements and capabilities. They will cause huge new businesses to appear but some giants currently making cars and their parts will spectacularly go bankrupt. Cities will ban private cars but encourage cars as autonomous taxis and rental vehicles. Already 65 per cent of cars in China are bought by businesses. The Japanese wa
  • Computer technology increasingly aids traffic management
    February 3, 2012
    Alan Perrott, Tyco Fire & Integrated Solutions (UK) Ltd, looks at trends in CCTV technology for traffic surveillance applications
  • Columbia goes intermodal to support sustainability
    April 10, 2014
    David Crawford on the ups and downs of a Latin metropolis. Medellín, Colombia’s second city and a recognised leader in sustainable transport thinking, is rapidly extending its substantial existing investment in modern mobility. It is deploying both an enhanced integrated traffic management array and the country’s first intermodal public transportation management system. The supplier of both, under separate €9 million (US$12.3 million) contracts, is Spanish engineering company Indra, a major exporter