Comment by jeroenhd

Comment by jeroenhd 3 days ago

3 replies

My car is older than that and came with an embedded SIM card. Quite a few navigation consoles had "live traffic updates" (often in trial format, but sometimes "lifetime") that basically consisted of 2G clients occasionally updating traffic data along planned routes. Not quite bottom of the line at the time, but also not uncommon at that point either. It's probably slightly worse than the dedicated satnav screens people were buying back when the car was new, although neither compares to what a smartphone will expose passively from just being inside of a moving car.

ssl-3 3 days ago

There's other ways to get local traffic data, too. For instance: Traffic Message Channel, which can be broadcast with RDS on an FM station, exists.

As long as stations persist that transmit the data (it's sent over RDS), then it will continue to work. There's no subscription involved (or at least, there isn't for my car -- it works where it works, and there's no mechanism by which to pay for using it).

The Wiki has some further reading on the technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_message_channel

1313ed01 3 days ago

Probably the only good thing about this country shutting down the 2G and 3G networks now is all the spy devices that will go permanently offline.

  • jeroenhd 3 days ago

    On the one hand, they won't be able to communicate with the home base anymore. On the other hand, they'll light up the map like a Christmas tree if someone ever turns on a stingray in their vicinity.