Every morning I see mushrooms that have sprouted and grown taller than the surrounding grass in my yard, all in a matter of hours. Not until today did I equate high-speed mushrooms with transportation technology.
Mushrooms are the flowering fruits of an underground network of cells that communicate and coordinate their activities. The networks can be very large. In fact, the largest living organism on earth is thought to be a honey fungus living in the Blue Mountains of western Oregon that encompasses four square miles.
Similarly, it takes a lot of data and coordination to achieve safe, profitable, on-time and damage-free deliveries day after day. Much of the information that managers and drivers need to plan and execute these activities is captured by mobile computers and sensors that share an Internet connection to software applications in the cloud.
Truthfully, the only reason mushrooms entered my mind is that a San Diego-based company named Mushroom Networks introduced a portable, high-speed Internet appliance called Portabella (with “Porta” short for portable) that could have an impact on the transportation industry. Here’s why:
Traditionally, fleets have subscribed to a single mobile communications provider to have a satellite or cellular connection to their vehicles. In some cases, the computing device in the cab can switch between cellular, satellite and Wi-Fi where available to extend coverage and keep costs down.
Portabella works by pooling data plans from up to six different wireless carriers to deliver the best combination of speed and reliable cellular coverage. With the pooling or sharing of data plans, installing multiple sim cards in one device is not more expensive than subscribing to a single data plan for each truck, and you can do things that are not possible otherwise due to bandwidth limitations of a single connection, says Dr. Cahit Akin, co-founder and chief executive of Mushroom Networks.
All major wireless carriers like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile allow subscribers to pool or share data plans among multiple devices. Whether you have one line or six lines, you pay the same monthly rate with pricing based on data usage rather than the number of sim cards activated.
