The WiMAX-enabled Taxi at Taiwan Broadband 2009

Today we visited the Taiwan Broadband WiMAX 2009 trade show in Taipei City and got a look at a range of different devices and applications which are somehow broadband or WiMAX related.



The Taiwan government has invested a lot of money into WiMAX and it is one of the first countries in the world to have at least quite a bit of this sort of wireless "4G" broadband connectivity available for consumer use.

We saw a range of netbook enabled with WiMAX, along with MIDs and other personal internet devices, but for us, by far the coolest thing we saw at the show was the WiMAX-enabled taxi. It's a next-generation taxi cab that is fully connected with WiMAX. It at first seems kind of futuristic, but this is an actual Taiwanese cab and the person sitting in the driver seat is the owner of the car and a taxi driver. It's in operation right now.

A small touch computer device in the backseat running Windows CE allows the passenger to surf the net, use a range of location based services and even watch TV and more.

Watch our video below for a look at the Taiwan WiMAX-enabled taxi:



The next taxi I pull over on the street, let's just say I hope it has WiMAX.