Wikipedia
Veniam is a technology startup focused on building large WiFi mesh networks using moving vehicles like city buses or taxis. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California and was founded in 2012. The Company received 4.9 million dollars in 2014 in a funding round from True Ventures, USV and Cane Investments. The company technology is being used in Porto’s city buses with about 230,000 users with routers installed on over 600 buses, taxis and garbage trucks. That’s the 73% of the bus riders with mobile devices. They aim to equip many moving things with wireless hotspots creating a mesh that could be used to build sensors to turn the city smarter.Each vehicle is equiped with a NetRider, a multi network unit with Wi-Fi ( 802.11p), DSRC, GPS and cellular connectivity.
Veniam is planning to expand its service to cities in the US, like San Francisco, New York and Austin. The company was founded by João Barros, the CTO is Roy Russell, former Zipcar CTO, other founder and chairman is Robin Chase, who is the co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar and Buzzcar and Susana Sargento.
The main advantage of using mobile hotspots for a connected city are that they can be used as sensors and could interact with utilities or traffic systems, they can create a mesh for information to jump between hotspots to reach the final destination (similar to FireChat) and this info can be used to improve traffic and help drivers. The Company has received awards for this vision of the internet of things. Veniam has been awarded in 2015 by Gartner a “Cool Vendor” in Smart Cities. In 2015 it was also winner of the Building Global Innovators by MIT Portugal and winner of CableLabs innovation. Institutional partners for Veniam include: Universidade do Porto, Universidade de Aveiro, MIT Portugal and UPTEC among others.