Skip to main content

Q-Free calls on traffic signal companies to stop ‘stifling innovation’

Q-Free is challenging all traffic signal companies to release their management information bases (MIB) to speed up innovation and reduce agency costs.
November 15, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

Q-Free says openly sharing MIBs enables multi-vendor solutions to work, giving departments of transportation the freedom to select the best solution for their needs - while avoiding being locked into a single vendor or paying integration fees. It is also expected to promote fair competition and prevent taxpayers from overpaying for transportation infrastructure, the company adds.

The challenge and accompanying campaign called FREE the MIBS (or #FREEtheMIBS), follows Q-Free’s decision to release their manufacturer-specific MIBs to the company’s award-winning Intelight Maxtime local controller software.

Tom Stiles, executive vice president of urban solutions for Q-Free brand Intelight, says: “Proprietary MIBs are stifling innovation and forcing agencies to spend unnecessary money to manage traffic efficiently. The only way to get truly smart cities is to open these MIBs up so all technology pieces can communicate with each other.”

For traffic signal operations, the MIBs are used to manage traffic signals through the external advanced transportation controllers (ATC) located in a cabinet on the roadside. Approximately 15-20% of the objects found in the MIBs for ATCs have been standardised by the NTCIP 1201 and 1202 standards, but the remaining 75-80% of the objects are manufacturer specific.

According to Q-Free, this limits interoperability between devices and systems from different vendors and impedes the customer from choosing the best available solutions from multiple vendors. Sharing MIBs freely between manufacturers and agencies can alleviate these problems and help rid streets of unnecessary congestion caused by a lack of choice, the company adds.

Stiles explains that being compliant with existing standards is not the same as being open.

“I understand the fear because you’ll no longer be able to lock cities down from a sales perspective,” he continues. “But our industry has lacked innovation for the last 15-20 years, and bigger tech companies will eat us all if we don’t work together to make ourselves more adaptive to the growing Internet of Things culture.”

As part of the campaign, a collaborative website has been unveiled along with an accompanying hashtag, #FREEtheMIBS.

UTC

Related Content

  • October 7, 2019
    Dutch road safety ‘getting worse’ says expert
    Roads in the Netherlands have become more dangerous over the last decade, according to one of the country’s leading road safety experts.
  • February 6, 2015
    Netherlands hosts Automotive Week 2015
    Automotive Week 2015, with its theme of Smart mobility on the road, is to be held in Helmond, the Netherlands from 25 March to 1 April and includes a demonstration of truck platooning with two lorries on the N270, as well as an interactive opening symposium which includes the opening of the country’s new traffic management centre. Other conference highlights include the tenth Automotive Congress on Talking Traffic and the Driven Award which will be presented for the best smart solution for clean and safe
  • October 11, 2017
    Call for ITS World Congress in Copenhagen now open
    The Call for Contributions for ITS World Congress in Copenhagen 2018 are now open with a deadline for 15 December 2017. Leading up to the event, the City of Copenhagen and the Danish Industry Foundation have hosted the first ITS Hackathon, which aims to motivate Danish businesses to test new ITS solutions in the urban environment.
  • July 25, 2019
    ReachNow scraps car rental service in Seattle and Portland
    ReachNow has scrapped its car-rental services in Seattle and Portland following a corporate “realignment”, says The Seattle Times. ReachNow offered rentals for BMWs and Mini Coopers and launched a ride-hailing service last year. In May, the company announced to some of its customers that it was shutting down its ride-hailing service, saying that its third-party vendor could no longer support their business. Last November, ReachNow - a BMW subsidiary - integrated car-sharing and ride-hailing int