News

• GM closes divi­sions in bank­ruptcy, future of OnStar still uncertain
• Qatar Tele­com invests for rapid expan­sion in Mid­dle East
• UAE’s Mobile net­works con­sid­er­ing shar­ing infrastructure
• M2M Con­sumer mar­ket growth con­tin­gent on usability
• ABI Reports 12% of all new cars will ship with embed­ded telem­at­ics by 2010
• Gart­ner: Wire­less Con­nec­tiv­ity to be Main Focus for Vehi­cle Man­u­fac­tur­ers by 2012
• Mobile back­haul equip­ment invest­ments jumped to $4.6 bil­lion worldwide
• Alcatel-​​Lucent to Build Back­haul Net­work for Claro Panama
• Toy­ota knows, China is ripe for telematics

A spe­cial thank you to Robert Rus­nak with Trango Sys­tems who helped grow our under­stand­ing of mobile back­bone infra­struc­ture. Trango Sys­tems designs, engi­neers, and man­u­fac­tures microwave radios for high-​​capacity IP– and TDM-​​native band­width for mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work ser­vice providers

Insight

GE and Lib­erty Mutual Part­ner in Telem­at­ics Offering

Accord­ing to Thomas M. Troy, COO of Lib­erty Mutual Agency Mar­kets’ Regional Com­pa­nies Group, the Onboard Advi­sor “is the first GPS-​​based prod­uct to har­ness mul­ti­ple tech­nolo­gies to yield direct, mea­sur­able sav­ings as well as sig­nif­i­cant insur­ance discounts”.

Mike Slat­tery, the archi­tect of Onboard Advi­sor, Telem­at­ics Weekly learned this prod­uct was first designed for Safeco Insurance’s “Teen­surance” pro­gram to mon­i­tor teenage dri­ving habits. Prior to release, Safeco received requests for a sim­i­lar com­mer­cial fleets device. After Lib­erty Mutual’s acqui­si­tion of Safeco for $6.2 bil­lion, this project received con­tin­ued inter­nal support.

GE Com­mer­cial Finan­cial divi­sion that can no longer com­pete in this econ­omy, GE is retool­ing to cre­at­ing a suite of telem­at­ics prod­ucts and ser­vices that take advan­tage of the ana­lytic data their Com­mer­cial Finan­cial divi­sion has accu­mu­lated. Although it is strange to think of GE as a start-​​up com­pany, in this case they really are. With bor­rowed hard­ware from Hughes Telem­at­ics and a 2-​​week train­ing pro­gram GE has com­mit­ted them­selves to sell­ing 90,000 units before year’s end and assumed sub­stan­tial lia­bil­ity for this par­tic­u­lar offering.

Lib­erty Mutual demanded a low monthly pre­mium for the Onboard Advi­sor prod­uct which would appeal to their cus­tomers. Hard­ware, war­ranty, inte­gra­tion, ser­vic­ing, sales assis­tance and car­rier costs are the respon­si­bil­ity of GE, not Lib­erty Mutual. Although US Bank is pro­vid­ing the gas card, it is obvi­ous that GE’s abil­ity to meet these com­mit­ments will ulti­mately deter­mine their suc­cess in this endeavor.