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LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION
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Over the past year mobile phone location-based services have sprung up as a low-cost alternative to dedicated in vehicle telematics systems. But what can they really offer — and are they any use to fleet opera
tors? Robin Meczes finds out.
Investing in a vehicle telematics system has traditionally been a worryingly expensive proposition and, although prices have fallen recently, the initial outlay associated with these systems remains a major hurdle. Uncertain about how the technology works and fearful of fixed-term contracts and high running costs,many a potential user is still holding fire.
Mobile phones,on the other hand, are a familiar technology and over the past year or so,a number of new telematics services based on mobiles have been launched.
These location-based services (LBS) depend on the GSM network's ability to locate mobile phones by triangulating their position between phone masts.
Perhaps the biggest single application for LBS so far is in straightforward vehicle tracking,and if all you want from a telemat ics system is the ability to find out where a particular driver is at a given time. LBS can certainly do the job.Typically, all you have to do is register existing phones you want to track with a service provider and then access a website to see where they are.
But other services, too, are available via mobile phone, including route planning, traffic flow information and even satellite navigation. And of course mobile phones also offer both voice and text communications.
Decent range for the fleet
Put together, it's a decent range of services that will satisfy the basic requirements of many a fleet operator. Better still, locationbased services score heavily against traditional in-vehicle telematics systems in terms of cost.The total upfront investment required to start using Flee tOnline's location-based tracking service, for example, is an admin fe of £1.75.After that, it's pay-as-you-go with charges of between lip and 25p per positioi request and as many phones as you want cal be tracked.
Overview Mapping, meanwhile, which pr vides the Verilocation service, offers a scher based on a monthly or annual subscription with charges ranging from 20p to 50p per position request.
And some, like telecoms supplier RHA Telecom. even offer location-based trackirq free to existing mobile phone customers.
Given that users need nothing more than their existing mobile phones and a webenabled computer and that there are no additional contracts or installation charges to worry about, mobile phone based service like this are attractive. But inevitably there are things they cannot do. One of the key areas they fail in is crossborder coverage. Although roaming agreements exist between network providers for voice services, the same is not true for LBS so anyone looking to track drivers or vehicles on international work is basically scuppe red.
-In principle, international coverage isn't a problem." says Tim Murdoch. managing director of Yeoman Navigation, which supplies text and voice-based mobile phone route guidance and traffic warning information. 'But the big issue would be cost. If you're in France, you could end up paying a lot even if you did have the roaming agreement."
"On tracking,the problem is getting the networks to all co-operate and getting standard protocols," addsTim Steer. managing director of RHA Telecom. -It's about the political will and commercial viability of doing so."
Data protection
Roelof Derickx, sales and marketing vicepresident of LBS provider FleetOnline, says there are also data protection issues, "You need to provide permission to be tracked. Permitted numbers need to go on a white list and that list needs to be accessed by all the networks in every country concerned before they provide location-based information.Th at is an issue that's not been resolved."
Most expect these problems to be sorted out in due course Steer reckons it'll take somewhere between three and eight years -but, at present, location based services are not capable of tracking cross-border.
Another issue is the lesser accuracy of location-based systems. Depending on the density and cell size of phone masts in the vicinity of the phone being tracked, positional precision ranges from I 00m to 5.000m.
By and large. suggests Craig Sears-Biack.chief operating officer of traditional vehicle-based systems provider Isotrak, phone cell location is more than accurate enough for most truck operators though when it comes to straightforward tracking."With trucks around 4011 long, distances of half a metre are pretty irrelevant," he says. But there are exceptions, he adds, one xample being tracking vehicles or trailers around large sites where 100m accuracy won't be enough to determine whether a vehicle is at a loading bay. near the gatehouse or in the workshop.
The development of mobile phones with built-in satellite (GPS) technology, however. will get around this. UPS-enabled phones are already on the market and some LBS providers are already testing them.
Complementary strengths
In fact the strengths of GPS and LBS are complementary, says Derickx of FleetOnline, with GPS offering better accuracy in open areas but being less effective in city centres (or inside buildings) due to line-of-sight problems; while LBS works indoors and out and is at its best in city centres where mast coverage is at its densest.The additional cost for mobile phones fitted with GPS receivers, adds Andrew Overton, managing director of Overview Mapping, is likely lobe only around £610 £7 per unit,so take-up is likely to be high.
There are, however,still some telematics applications for which mobile phone technology simply isn't suitable — stolen vehicle tracking being a good example (unless you're lucky enough to have left your mobile in the vehicle when it's stolen).And perhaps the other major application missing for truck operators is the ability to monitor vehicle performance and load status:There's a lot of talk about using Bluetooth wireless technology to link sensors on board a vehicle with mobile phones so that vehicle performance and load status can be remotely supervised using location based services — but so far. nobody has brought an LBS system to market that does so.
Biggest constraint This ties in with what is probably the biggest constraint of all about current location-based telematics services from the fleet manager's point of view — the lack of back office reporting.Where traditional vehicle-mounted systems will give all manner of reports on driving styles, hours worked,mileage driven, average speed and many other issues —and allow you to compare different drivers and vehicles— location based services, for now at least, are very simple products that don't provide much, if any, reporting.
In the future, once again, it is possible that location-based services may evolve to become more sophisticated, both in terms of what they can do and the reporting options they offer. For now, however, anyone looking to use them for true fleet management purposes will be disappointed.
Despite these constraints, everyone expects the take-up of location-based services to grow."Within 12-18 months, I think LBS will match GPS for volume," according to Derickx of FleetOnline.
Whether users choose a traditional GPS system or LBS will depend largely on how often they need the information and whether or not they need the added accuracy, says Overton of Overview Mapping." We reckon if you're looking to poll a vehicle more than five times a day. then GPS is probably better at present. But if not. LBS is low hassle.low cost, no hardware, no installation and no contract in exchange for approximate locations. It's a no-brainer," he says. While location-based services probably aren't suitable for larger fleets which need constant monitoring with sophisticated reporting functions, there's no reason for smaller or even medium sized hauliers to shy away from them, admits Sears-Black of Isotrak.
Data protection 'Mc only thing users should remember, he says, is that some pay-as-you-go tariffs represent a 20-fold increase 'per ping' over traditional in-vehicle systems — though he concedes that you'll get a lot of pings in (5,000 at 20p a time in fact) before you reach the typical annual all-in cost per vehicle for traditional systems of around LI ,000. •