Attention: TDR Forum Junkies 
Speedtraps
By way of background, GSM cellular phone coverage and market penetration in Europe is considerably higher than both the CDMA and GSM equivalent standards in the continental USA and Canada, due no doubt to the fact that the owner of the cellular phone does not have to pay for the privilege of receiving wireless telephone calls on their cellular phone, when in their home network. (When roaming in another European country, it's a different matter).
The differentiation between European landline numbers and cellular numbers is made even more obvious, because they use different numbering plans in each European country, so that telephone calls calls to cellular phones are instantly recogniseable and the caller pays for the entire call!!
A useful by-product of the GSM cellular phone service is SMS text messaging (aka Short Message Service) This has been around for more than 10 years and is basically like having a display pager function built into your cellular phone, rather than carrying around a separate cellular phone and a beeper.
Apologies for this long intro but now please read on for the "real story"...
SMS - avoiding the police speed trap
A Norwegian company, Cellus, has been offering the Speed trap notification service in Norway since September 2000, where it has already signed up tens of thousands of subscribers and it now intends to extend the service to other European countries.
Whenever a subscriber sees, or is caught by, a police speed trap, they send an SMS text message to a central server, which broadcasts it to all the cellular subscribers in the area. Subscribers receive around 10 messages a week, for which they pay approx 30 cents for each message.
Cellus, the company which developed the product, state that: "It's legal in Norway. But the police don't like it. "
He can be confident of significant interest from the UK's speeding motorist community also , but the police and government may not be so enthusiastic …… However, a spokesman for the Department of Transport has since confirmed that such a device is not, repeat not, currently illegal.
Here's the reason for the Government's dilemma... .
We are constantly being told that speed cameras are a vital road safety feature, and that they are only deployed in danger zones, or accident blackspots. The presence, therefore, of a camera would indicate that you're in such an area, so how could it possibly be illegal, or not liked by the police or the government, for drivers to be warned that they are nearing a particularly dangerous stretch of road?
Perhaps the catchphrase "only in America" has just been redefined?
By way of background, GSM cellular phone coverage and market penetration in Europe is considerably higher than both the CDMA and GSM equivalent standards in the continental USA and Canada, due no doubt to the fact that the owner of the cellular phone does not have to pay for the privilege of receiving wireless telephone calls on their cellular phone, when in their home network. (When roaming in another European country, it's a different matter).
The differentiation between European landline numbers and cellular numbers is made even more obvious, because they use different numbering plans in each European country, so that telephone calls calls to cellular phones are instantly recogniseable and the caller pays for the entire call!!
A useful by-product of the GSM cellular phone service is SMS text messaging (aka Short Message Service) This has been around for more than 10 years and is basically like having a display pager function built into your cellular phone, rather than carrying around a separate cellular phone and a beeper.
Apologies for this long intro but now please read on for the "real story"...
SMS - avoiding the police speed trap
A Norwegian company, Cellus, has been offering the Speed trap notification service in Norway since September 2000, where it has already signed up tens of thousands of subscribers and it now intends to extend the service to other European countries.
Whenever a subscriber sees, or is caught by, a police speed trap, they send an SMS text message to a central server, which broadcasts it to all the cellular subscribers in the area. Subscribers receive around 10 messages a week, for which they pay approx 30 cents for each message.
Cellus, the company which developed the product, state that: "It's legal in Norway. But the police don't like it. "
He can be confident of significant interest from the UK's speeding motorist community also , but the police and government may not be so enthusiastic
…… However, a spokesman for the Department of Transport has since confirmed that such a device is not, repeat not, currently illegal. Here's the reason for the Government's dilemma... .
We are constantly being told that speed cameras are a vital road safety feature, and that they are only deployed in danger zones, or accident blackspots. The presence, therefore, of a camera would indicate that you're in such an area, so how could it possibly be illegal, or not liked by the police or the government, for drivers to be warned that they are nearing a particularly dangerous stretch of road?
Perhaps the catchphrase "only in America" has just been redefined?
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