[Crosseye_Jack]

My local bus network use M2M Sim's running on the Vodafone network but its basically a virtual private mobile network running on top of Vodafone's network with no connection to the internet.

These connections are in both the busses and the stops. The reason is so the stops can provide real time updates to people at the stops too. If a bus breaks down its no longer tracked on the real time updates so you are not effing and blinding because a the stop said there is a bus due in 5 mins and no bus comes. And if a bus is removed from service unexpected then the information on why can be feed to people waiting for the bus. People are less likely to be pissed that a bus didn't come when expected if they are given a valid reason.

Personally I was hoping they used some form of radio link I could of sniffed with a SDR so I could put a live updating sign in my house. I just scrape the data from their live feed they use to update the tracker on their mobile app/website instead.

Broadcasting out a signal from the stops could need a transmitter that may need to be licensed as the signal would be to be picked up quite a distance from the stop. Also not all the stops in my area are these "real time updating" stops as they are normally put into covered stops (EDIT: Bus Shelters... The correct term wouldn't come to mind while I was typing this.) and some of our stops are just poles in the ground with a sign on them. The busses tracking their own position wouldn't need these stops upgrading to give this information to people on board the bus as the covered stops can be quite a distance between each other and removes any issues if a stop get damaged and stops broadcasting data (say a car crashes into it).

The busses tracking themselves also have benefits that don't visibly benefit passengers. The services back office can monitor busses and spot problems on the network as they happen. Unexpected heavy traffic on a route may trigger the company to skip or stagger a bus (one of my local routes in advertised as being "every 5-10 mins". The real time traffic condition information could also be sold on to other companies (not sure on the value of this data esp for busses that run once an hour or even longer).

[rasz_pl]

There are systems that solve Bus shelter problem by piggybacking on FM station RDS

http://www.windytan.com/2013/11/decoding-radio-controlled-bu...

[Crosseye_Jack]

I was surprised my local network didn't do something similar as it seemed like a logical choice. But after some research I found nothing about them using RDS to do this.

I would love to be able to talk to a tech at the travel network about this. My own research came to the suspicion that because where I am in the country they would of had to strike up deals with multiple transmission sites to get the coverage needed.