• You're a British truck operator with a vehicle delivering
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in Italy. You're given the chance of a backload tomorrow, but you don't know how far the driver is from his destination. How do you contact him, or even work out where he is?
Within two years you could be reaching him via a communications satellite. A batch of 40 vehicles on the Continent has been equipped for trial operations with a system known as Qualcomm, and rival systems are waiting in the wings.
Truck operators are becoming increasingly dependent on instant communication with their drivers. On a domestic scale this could mean cellular telephone; Band III radio or more sophisticated tracking and paging systems. Yet on the international scene these options are far from universal; something more wide-ranging is needed.
Commercially based communications satellites are becoming commonplace with many more scheduled for launch over the next few years. Now the electronics giants and banks have sensed an opportunity in road transport.
The problem with well-established systenis such as mobile telephones or radios is incompatibility. Frequencies and protocols for mobile radio vary widely across Europe, despite gestures at harmonisation. In many cases it is illegal to use a radio registered in one country when passing through another, if it works at all. The same problem applies to cellular telephones.
Eventually some of these incompatabilities will be resolved, but a lot of work still needs to be done. Britain, for once, is ahead of most other countries in this field. In the meantime there is a growing need for a more universal communications system.
Possibly the most advanced system so far has been developed by French electronics giant Alcatel in association with an American communications specialist, Qualcomm. The Qualcomm-Alcatel combine is working with Eutelsat, the French-based European satellite organisation, which already has its own satellites in orbit. This has made it possible to equip trucks from several leading fleets with a working trial system. Operators taking part include Van Amerongen, Frans Maas and NedLloyd Road Cargo. In the UK, British Telecom is among operators who have expressed an interest.
In the United States, the Qualcomm system is already up and running. One truck operator, Schneider Corporation of Wisconsin, has 5,000 trucks equipped with it, and reckons to save 50,000 hours of wasted driving time a week due to more reponsive scheduling.
The European trials are going well, according to Eugen Klotz of Alcatel-SEL, Stuttgart, which is covering West Germany, Austria and Switzerland for Qualcomm-Alcatel. Depending on the outcome, a commercial system could be on the market by the end of the year.
A rival system is under development by a consortium which includes Daf. This system, which is known as Roadacom (en Route Applied Data Communication) is using the resources of the London-based Inmarsat operation, and is currently focused on a satellite called Marecs. It is due to be fully operational by 1992.
Roadacom differs from Qualcomm in that it is not exclusively satellite-based. "We believe the customers should define their own requirements," says Dal's transport consultancy manager, Rudolf Sure. "In a local context we might recommend cellular telephones or even infra-red and induction-loop data transfer. Satellites would be used for international operation." For this reason emphasis is being placed on interfaces between systems (the speciality of Simac, one of the participating organisations).
In some ways the most ambitious project at the moment is called Locstar. This again is French-based, but has a British marketing director; former Volvo Trucks manager Jim Lamont. Its backers include British Aerospace and DaimlerBenz. Locstar plans to launch two of its
own satellites in 1992, courtesy of the Ariane space programme. It hopes to go live towards the end of that year, with the full service following in 1993. A third satellite will be launched later as a backup.
Locstar is expecting custom from road hauliers to provide up to 70% of its business, hence Lamont's involvement. "We don't want to let our feet get too far off the ground," he says. Locstar will provide turnkey systems that include the company's own in-cab terminal equipment and other hardware as well as management software. However, Lamont sees wider applications too. "We would expect to offer access to proprietary databases, weather forecasts, navigation systems and so on."
The users of the various systems will be offered two facilities a message transmission service and a vehicle location system. Eventually voice transmission could become possible too, although this is much more greedy in terms of the air time it requires. Even vehicle location demands a greater level of resource than data transmission, though they tend to go hand in hand. Location generally requires two or more satellites to achieve an electronic form of triangulation: data transmission can be achieved with one.
The prospects for both look good. Lamont says Locstar will be able to pinpoint a vehicle anywhere in Europe and beyond to within 100 metres — even closer with the help of local radio beacons. Such beacons will probably form a fundamental element in the Roadacom system.
BEACON-BASED
In the UK, Securicor subsidiary Datatrak already runs a beacon-based location and messaging system that is said to give accuracy at least as good as this. So far it covers England and Wales (with Scotland due to follow), and discussions are in hand for extending to Germany, Holland, Italy and Spain. As currently conceived, the enlarged network would use conventional land-based radio links, but the company says it is "actively monitoring" satellite developments.
Although commercial vehicles will probably need to carry some form of small dish, users will no more be aware of satellite intervention than they are when, say, watching a television transmission from the United States.
Equipment will gather sophistication with time. As Bure points out: "Developing integrated new cab interiors takes time." Eventually on-board equipment can be expected to include computers with monitors and printers to display stored messages. These should gain significance with international moves to have electronically-transmitted data accepted as carrying legal force:,proof of delivery could be supplied virtually at the moment of receipt.
At the moment costs still look high. Bure reckons that early systems might run to £4,000 per vehicle. "Demand is not high enough yet to create a downward spiral." However, American estimates put the final cost below £500, and Lamont speaks optimistically of a rate of 20p per message. At that price his system could be viable even for domestic applications.
by Peter Rowlands