Anglia Railways & Fortune Cookie to develop WAP platform for passengers
Interactive agency Fortune Cookie today announced that it is to build a WAP site for Anglia Railways, UK Train Operator of the Year 2000. The site, one of the first to be developed for a Train Operator, will provide passengers with real time travel information, timetable details, engineering updates and customer service facilities.
Nick Wilson, Anglia’s Group IT Director, commented, “Our customers, especially the commuter and business travellers, were asking for more real time travel information to be made available. We are very pleased to announce that with Fortune Cookie’s help we will soon be offering this new functionality via mobile phones, on our web site.”
Justin Cooke Founder of Fortune Cookie, commented, “We are working with Anglia to deliver real value to their customers. This exciting project will offer rail passengers useful and usable wireless services.”
Using their mobile phone or PDA, travellers will be able to monitor the progress of a train that they are destined to catch. Further, Anglia will enable passengers to plan future journeys with a searchable timetable, plus frequent track engineering updates.
There will also be a promotion facility providing a run-down of recent special offers, which will provide a basis for future e-commerce applications. Cooke continued, “The platform we are building will soon allow passengers to book train tickets with their WAP enabled device.”
The WAP based service will feature customer service functionality, including a phone directory. For example, if a customer discovers they’ve left their coat in a station waiting room after boarding a train, they will be able to dial up the lost property office during the journey.
Maria Ward, Anglia’s Internet Manager, commented “Fortune Cookie brings an expertise in emerging technologies to this project. We are impressed with the solutions they have proposed for integrating these technologies to achieve a real time benefit for our customers.”
Cooke concluded, “Fortune Cookie is committed to solving commercial problems through the application of technology, being the first UK agency to develop a site for i-mode, the Japanese based wireless service. We work with our clients to develop wireless functionality that optimises upon the abilities of services at present, and that will exploit the increased download speeds of 2.5 and 3G networks as they rollout.”
Anglia and Fortune Cookie are also considering the provision of real time departure and arrivals board information from their various stations, supported by technology provided by leading IT company Sema. The user will be able to dial up the times displayed on the departure and arrivals board, at the station of their choice.
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