After a trial lasting 18 months with a UK local authority to test a wireless-based 'intelligent' transport management system, and an investment totalling £1.8m, the private sector backers involved in the project have hailed it a complete success.

"We are already talking with other local councils [in the UK] about how this system can be implemented," says Rob McDonald, senior associate at PBA (Peter Brett Associates), an independent consulting practice and leader of the private sector consortium.

"It is great to be part of a public sector IT success story," says Roger Horlock, MD at Metranet, a wireless ISP and co-backer of the project. "We have proven the system both in terms of reliability and cost."

The origins of the project lie with the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA), which put out a call to tender in late 2006 for an intelligent transport system to deliver new and existing transport-based services both reliably and cost-efficiently. The winning project consortium, led by PBA, put up £900,000 to set up and run the project, a sum that was matched by SEEDA. Reading Borough Council tested the system.

At the heart of the Reading trial is a fixed WiMAX (802.16d) network run by Metranet, using base stations and CPE units from Alvarion. The WiMAX network is responsible for urban traffic management and control, which involves transmitting live CCTV images and traffic signal control information.

"The latency times are less than 100ms and our system is much more reliable than fixed-line infrastructure," says Horlock. "The technology competes well with leased lines and RS1000 [CCTV circuits] and we have successfully integrated the network with the Siemens traffic control system used by Reading Borough Council. We can offer any local authority a remote log in to the monitoring system so that they can view performance with complete transparency."

One potential fly in the ointment for the project backers is that the 3.3GHz spectrum on which the network runs, which has been sanctioned by the Ministry of Defence, is currently prohibited by the regulator (Ofcom) from commercial use. PBA and its partners are currently lobbying the government to lift this restriction.

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