Turkey’s Smart City Gaziantep and Turkcell Launch Beacon-Powered Transportation Feature for the Visually Disabled
July 15 2016 - 10:33AM
Business Wire
Turkcell (NYSE:TKC) (BIST:TCELL) and the Municipality of
Gaziantep, which have previously joined forces to transform the
city of Gaziantep into a “smart city”, have announced a new phase
in their cooperation, this time with the goal of facilitating the
lives of visually-disabled individuals. “My Dream Companion”, a
mobile application and service developed by Turkcell and the Young
Guru Academy (YGA), will now include a beacon-powered
transportation feature, live-trialed for the first time in
Gaziantep.
This Smart News Release features multimedia.
View the full release here:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160715005509/en/
Gaziantep Mayor Fatma Sahin (front left),
Turkcell CEO Kaan Terzioglu (back left), Gamze Sofuoglu (front
right) and Kursat Ceylan (back left) of Turkcell and YGA trialed
the transportation feature of My Dream Companion in Gaziantep.
(Photo: Business Wire)
The feature allows visually-disabled individuals to use the
buses on the city’s public transportation system without requiring
outside help. The traveler can access route and bus stop
information on their smartphone, and receive alerts when their bus
reaches the bus stop, and when it approaches their final
destination. The system also allows the driver to receive a warning
message if there is a visually-disabled individual waiting to board
the bus at any specific bus stop. The rare application of the
beacon technology in an outside setting ensures greater
precision.
The feature was tested in a live trial attended by Fatma Sahin,
the Mayor of Gaziantep, Kaan Terzioglu, the CEO of Turkcell,
members of Gaziantep’s visually-disabled community and journalists.
Turkcell and the Gaziantep Municipality aim to expand the service
to the entire city in the coming months, following the pilot
implementation.
My Dream Companion’s transportation feature is the latest
addition to the award-winning mobile application. Other features
include shopping center navigation and audio-description of movies,
which was also offered for the first time globally on a mobile app
through My Dream Companion. In addition to hosting the first
implementation of the transport feature, Gaziantep also became the
second stop after Istanbul for the expansion of the shopping center
navigation feature, also powered by beacon technology.
Making smart city Gaziantep smarter for the visually
disabled
Speaking at the press conference held in Gaziantep, Fatma
Sahin, the Mayor of Gaziantep, said:
“We have a long-standing cooperation with Turkcell in employing
technology to efficiently use our city’s resources and to
facilitate the lives of our citizens. Now we are expanding this
cooperation into the field of making our city equally accessible to
the disabled individuals as the non-disabled. Our goal is to
provide the means for the disabled inhabitants of our city to fully
and independently participate in all aspects of life. The
transportation feature of My Dream Companion, launched for the
first time in Gaziantep, as well as the other opportunities that
this app unlocks are major steps in achieving this goal for the
visually-disabled.”
Turkcell’s CEO Kaan Terzioglu emphasized the role that
mobile technologies play in ensuring equal participation of all
segments of society in all aspects of life. “We serve the city of
Gaziantep with our technology in a number of ways from our fiber
backbone to machine-to-machine communication. My Dream Companion,
and more specifically, the launching of the transportation feature
in Gaziantep, builds on this important foundation” said Terzioglu.
“Our work does not stop here: With our partners, we will find new
ways of serving our customers with life-enhancing technologies
which will eventually include artificial intelligence, augmented
reality and virtual reality. Joining forces with partners like
Gaziantep Municipality and the Young Guru Academy helps us design
solutions that speak to real needs and function well in real
settings.”
“My Dream Companion” is a constantly-evolving service and
application designed by Turkcell and the Young Guru Academy. It has
received the GSMA’s Global Mobile Award – or “Glomos’ – twice, in
2014 and 2016, in the category of “best use of mobile for
accessibility and inclusion”. It is available for free to visually
disabled customers of all mobile operators. “My Dream Companion”
serves all mobile phone users with features such as audio
recordings of daily newspapers, audio books, and location-based
information; and provides further services to smartphone users
through “My Dream Companion” app which includes transportation,
shopping center navigation and audio-description.
Further details on My Dream Companion’s audio description
feature are available here:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151022005894/en/Global-Turkcell-Incorporates-Audio-Description-Mobile-App
ABOUT TURKCELL: Turkcell is a converged telecommunication
and technology services provider, founded and headquartered in
Turkey. It serves its customers with voice, data, TV and
value-added consumer and enterprise services on mobile and fixed
networks. Turkcell launched LTE services in its home country on
April 1st, 2016, employing LTE-Advanced and 3 carrier aggregation
technologies in 81 cities. In 2G and 3G, Turkcell’s population
coverage is at 99.85% and 95.05%, respectively, as of March 2016.
It offers up to 1 Gbps fiber internet speeds with its FTTH
services. Turkcell Group companies serve 67.6 million subscribers
in 9 countries – Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Northern Cyprus,
Germany, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Moldova – as of March 31,
2016. Turkcell Group reported TRY3.2 billion revenue with total
assets of TRY26.2 billion as of March 31, 2016. It has been listed
on the NYSE and the BIST since July 2000, and is the only
NYSE-listed company in Turkey. Read more at www.turkcell.com.tr
View source
version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160715005509/en/
TurkcellHande Asik, +90 532 2106471Corporate
Communicationshande.asik@turkcell.com.tr
Turkcell lletism Hizmetl... (NYSE:TKC)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Turkcell lletism Hizmetl... (NYSE:TKC)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024