Q-POST’S ongoing radio frequency identification (RFID) pilot, involving Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia, will help boost the country’s postal service in future, communications equipment manufacturers Motorola said yesterday.
Motorola has set up high-performance antennas in mail processing centres across the three countries to track test envelopes, containing RFID tags.
This, the company said, has created a simulated environment of how mail moves through postal system and help authorities better understand the time and route that mail takes on its journey from collection to delivery.
Addressed and tagged by an independent third party, these test letters become mixed with regular letters at the point of posting and are automatically detected as they enter the sorting centres.
Positioned at the sorting centres’ gates, RFID readers detect the tags in the letters as soon as they enter the building, without needing ‘line of sight’ or individual scanning.
The test letters are then detected again as they exit the sorting centres. The logging of time and date help build a database measuring the quality of service.
Quality and development consultant at Q-Post Catina Aghayan said the corporation was excited by the outcome of the tests, which she said was the first RFID pilot for the postal sector in the Arab region. “With this technology, we will be able to track our mail at every stage of delivery from origin to final destination and of course could significantly improve Q-Post’s quality of service,” she said.
Motorola territory official Hozefa Saylawala said RFID solutions, supplied by partner Track IT, would prove effective in improving the quality of postal services.
GT
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