If you were one of the few people that used Melbourne’s bicycle sharing program to get around the city, you would have noticed the entire thing has been offline for the last couple of days. Well, turns out, the 2G network shutdown caused some “technical glitches” in their system.
According to the ABC, the bike share stations relied on the 2G network to send back information to its systems and – most importantly – release bikes to customers and visitors.
The RACV said that they knew of the 2G network shutdown and planned a simple upgrade changing the SIM card on all stations so they can communicate using the 3G network.
Turns out, it wasn’t that simple.
“Unfortunately to our disappointment we found it wasn’t just a matter of updating the sim card,” Gordon Oakley from the RACV told 774 ABC Melbourne. Oakley also told 3AW that they would need to upgrade some of the hardware to allow the stations to communicate with the system.
They say that the replacement parts are now on their way and the Bike Share program should be operational again sometime early next week.