Telematics Weekly

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Dual Mode Religion

by Alva H. Wright on Apr. 20, 2009, a Telematics Weekly exclusive

The reli­gion behind the dual mode cellular/​satellite track­ing device is quite intrigu­ing. As a for­mer evan­ge­list, I’m aware of the seduc­tion of this argu­ment — ubiq­ui­tous cov­er­age of your fleet. The power to shrink the world down into a sim­ple Excel spread­sheet is far too com­pelling to ignore. Throw in some scrip­tures from “The Book of Ana­lyt­ics” and cus­tomers are ready to be bap­tized. How­ever, before you con­vert there are some chal­lenges to first con­sider…

Expe­ri­ence: that most bru­tal of teach­ers. But you learn, my God do you learn.

C. S. Lewis

Cost

Com­bin­ing two sep­a­rate tech­nolo­gies into a sin­gle func­tional device is not an inex­pen­sive ven­ture. Inte­gra­tion into a sturdy, water­proof enclo­sure adds sig­nif­i­cant costs. Fac­tor in the needs for a small foot­print, anten­nae, wiring, instal­la­tion, test­ing and trou­bleshoot­ing and the price becomes exor­bi­tant. Incon­sis­tent 3rd party ven­dor pric­ing adds another layer of complexity.

Billing

Dual mode solu­tions incor­po­rate the billing struc­tures of at least two sep­a­rate car­ri­ers. Although Enter­prise Resource Plan­ning (“ERP”) appli­ca­tions are capa­ble of com­bin­ing billing from mul­ti­ple sources, this becomes prob­lem­atic when there are issues. In some cases the cus­tomer is directly respon­si­ble for all car­rier costs (a task so daunt­ing it makes this option infea­si­ble). In the major­ity of cases the ven­dor includes car­rier charges with the over­all solu­tion. This forces the cus­tomer to nego­ti­ate billing dis­putes with the ven­dor them­selves — rep­re­sent­ing a poten­tially explo­sive situation.

Lia­bil­ity

Unless the man­u­fac­turer also owns the car­rier net­works or vice versa, lia­bil­ity will always rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant bar­rier. Nei­ther entity has con­trol of the oper­a­tions of the other, nor will they be respon­si­ble for the oth­ers prod­ucts or ser­vices. This leaves the the newly con­verted cus­tomer in the mid­dle with — at times — no clear direc­tion or recourse. Fail­ure to sup­port the cus­tomer in this area has forced many to backslide.

With these bar­ri­ers in mind the real ques­tion is, in what niche, if any, can the dual mode exist. The assump­tion is that Wave­com, Telit, Del­phi, Quake Global, Webtech Wire­less, Telenor Con­nex­ion, BSM, Sky­Wave, etc. have all ded­i­cated sig­nif­i­cant resources to cre­at­ing this device because cus­tomer polling and research indi­cated its demand and/​or they secured guar­an­teed con­tracts. True or not, only a cou­ple of com­pa­nies seem posi­tioned to exploit this technology.

Quake Global has proved that the heavy machin­ery indus­try is ripe for this appli­ca­tion. Hav­ing dom­i­nated this mar­ket longer than any other telematics/​M2M man­u­fac­turer, their dual mode efforts with Telit and other ven­dors rep­re­sents an imme­di­ate oppor­tu­nity to be suc­cess­ful. How­ever, strained rela­tions between Quake and Wave­com has resulted in Wave­com part­ner­ing with Mobi­Apps to pro­duce their own dual mode device, the Q52. This GSM/​Orbcomm mod­ule rep­re­sents a real oppor­tu­nity for OEM’s to tai­lor their own solu­tion and will directly chal­lenge Quake’s grip in the mar­ket and their customer’s loyalty.

By under­stand­ing the inher­ent lim­i­ta­tions and oper­at­ing in the cor­rect ver­ti­cal, these com­pa­nies could finally move the dual mode from reli­gious dogma to reality.