keitai-l@appelsiini.net writes:
>Back here on earth: I've been given to believe that vending
>machines in Japan have had cellular links for several years
>now -- very helpful for sales tracking and inventory manage-
>ment. Not implausible. Cellular could be pretty cheap if
>you didn't have to worry about electronics miniaturization
>or lithium batteries. Anybody have info on this?
Not sure about vending machines, but some electricity meters certainly do
- particularly in the "entertainment districts" (i.e. Nakasu) which tend
to have lots of places crammed in to one building, all operating at night,
making conventional meter reading prohibitively expensive. They use PHS
though - Kyuden (local electricity company) being big investors in ASTEL
(not the most successful of PHS networks....) and desperate to justify the
huge sums they sank into it in days of yore. I gather it is very cost
effective - though from what I understand from occasional inebriated
sessions with some of their people, they would happily consider stuffing
an ASTEL phone into anything that stood still long enough if it would
increase usage. I take care not to bend over when re-tieing shoelaces...
> "Cmo units have an embedded computer that exponentially increases
>their functionality and allows consumers to reap the rewards of a
>unique membership-based service."
wonder what a Beowulf clust... oh never mind.
nick
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Received on Mon Aug 27 19:04:09 2001