Hoping to crowd the market with Instant Traffic Reporters
By JEFF HARRINGTON
Published October 27, 2003
As a star center for the Tampa Bay Lightning, Brian Bradley used to skate through jams on the ice in setting scoring records. Now Bradley and three partners say they have a way for bay area commuters to skate around traffic jams.
After two years of preparation, their company, Florida Digital Technologies, is rolling out the Instant Traffic Reporter. The portable device is designed to give drivers a 45-second update on regional traffic conditions at the touch of a button.
Retailing for $29.95, the device is expected to be available in area drugstores starting Saturday.
The Traffic Reporter, which is about the size of a radar detector, will air reports from the local operation of Westwood One Metro Networks, a company that provides traffic updates to radio stations throughout the country. It also will flash when there is an Amber Alert about an abducted child or news of a major traffic accident.
The device receives its signal through radio giant Infinity Broadcasting, which also will sell commercial time during the updates.
Obviously, motorists now can catch traffic reports for free on the radio every 10 to 15 minutes. But by then, they could already have committed to a route leading to a jam. "This is "Know before you go,' " Bradley said. "That's our motto."
There are some instant traffic/news/weather devices on the market nationally, but most involve a monthly subscription fee. With the Traffic Reporter, all that's required is the initial purchase and a supply of AAA batteries.
The Instant Traffic Reporter was the brainchild of two Tampa residents, DeWitt Smith and Dennis Lusk. They recruited Bradley as president and tapped telecom veteran Paul Melech as a primary investor and company chairman and chief executive.
Melech and his partners have invested about $2-million into designing, marketing and producing 100,000 of the traffic boxes in China for the introduction.
If the bay area "beta" market is successful, they envision heading into Orlando and West Palm Beach next. Then, perhaps, they'd go national.
"We could sell these for 40 or 50 bucks . . . but (a high profit per unit) is not what we're after," Bradley said. "The goal is to get these in as many hands as possible. . . . We could sell millions."
