Taxi Driver Online

I am after feedback from drivers that now use data in car equipment running on GPRS, as used with the cordic system as compared with in car data equipment that runs on a private mobile radio setup like the Auriga, ray wood, auto cab or sifted systems.

I'd like the PMR with a GPRS for when you go out of radio range.

Have both.

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IDFIMH

Thanks but I,m after the + and - of GPRS against pmr

Hello,
I have been looking at the same thing and trying to get questions answered but I have looked at systems that use 3G and with anyluck 4G.

I have been looking at :

1. Over all system cost i.e. airtime and best deal
2. Handset deal
3. Radio cost (inc maintenance/installation/ongoing costs)
4. Radio site costs

Radio is good as you can have a base at your office and even if you had a 12v battery and a radio you can still work. Reliant on no one. WIth GPRS/3G/4G you are counting on the network providers but the network coverage is very good in places (some others not good but mostly rural).

I am still investigating things as in no hurry. I have also been looking at the various companies and what they offer. There are a number of newer companies on the market but not sure about them. Not sure about some of the older companies either.

Will be interesting to see what others say apart from "Dont buy Mercury"

+'s : Should work anywhere where there is a mobile phone signal
Accuracy when plotting GPS position
Drivers can't disable the GPS and 'bent' plot
Faster (?) as more info can be sent/received in the same time as PMR

-'s : Reliant on the mobile phone network

We had a problem with GPRS at the weekend. For several hours we kept getting a '?' next to the GPRS on the PDA's occasionaly changing to an 'X' (which meant the GPRS was down) and back to the '?' accompanied with the message 'Delayed response from Orange network'. Fortunately on our system the GPRS is used as a backup to PMR and is only used when no radio signal can be received, otherwise for those few hours we would have had difficulty getting jobs.

Thanks Paul and sasha. At present we use sigtec an Australian system which has served us well for ten years. From day one the gps has been uncheatable and accurate. We have been used to a system that was technically ahead ten years ago. Apart from the reliability of the GPRS providers ( I am interested to hear from any others of down time or patchy coverage experience ) we are used to a live cover screen, so as soon as a job has been taken from the cover screen, that job is immediately removed (within 5 secs ) from the cover screen of all vehicles logged on. So the question is wether GPRS gives the same response.

As you know I don’t own a taxi company but I’m within earshot of most incoming calls so I generally get to know every time a system breaks for whatever reason. Taking a huge step back and trying to see the overall situation between the two, I’d say that there’s not that much difference.

From the in car side of things, there will always be a driver somewhere complaining his equipment isn’t working and that’s true whichever system is being used but at least with a PDA, everything is there in one self contained unit. If it doesn’t work then just swap it or throw it in the bin and get another it really has come down to that.

In terms of overall system independence and reliability, a professionally installed and maintained PMR system will be near impossible to beat. Just how robust it is depends on the company’s assessment of the risks and the costs involved and that in turn is usually related to the company size. Backups are needed whether you talking about base stations or phone-networks and the good news here is that because the cost of airtime is almost nothing these days, having an entire backup network is wholly realistic.

Imagine you were running a fleet of 100 inkjet printers. Would you pay £600 for a printer that I tell you it’s more reliable and should in theory last you forever or do you go out and get one for £40? In ten years time the £40 printer might have been replaced two or three times but at least you’d have a shiny new unit rather than an old one.

If I were to be setting up a taxi company today, there’s no way I’d tie myself to a technology that’s in decline. Equipment specifically designed for taxis can’t possibly keep pace with the rapid technological developments taking place in the mass PDA market and if the PDA can do the same job?

Massive advantage of a PDA .............. portable, so if you need the loo you needn't miss a job.
PMR is tied to the car and even popping into the office or a shop, you could miss a job.

Also, with certain companies moving over to Android, not mentioning any names, but I now have just one unit, my phone. It gives me my work, tracks me with GPS, lets me text or make phone calls, check flights on the internet, sat-nav for the odd street I don't know and when I'm bored I can play my puzzle games knowing that if I have a job it butts in so I don't miss it.

PMR good if your base has a very good aerial, and I've worked in Wigan, the land of hills!

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Datamaster don't need a sales team, they have happy customers doing it for them
Nidge for Prime Minister

There are so many plusses and minuses with both systems but it really doesn’t matter if the scales tip slightly one way or the other.

Not too long ago, photographers where weighing the pros and cons of digital verses film but look how that’s ended up.

One technology is developing rapidly while the other is shrinking, it’s a no brainer.

two comments to this debate;

Geography! What is the nature of the area you work in? Is it hilly or is it flat. Do you have an suitable, cost effctive aerial site? I use to spent 12K a year maintaining a decent remote site that gave me half decent coverage for the operation that I had. That is an awful lot of monthly data packages.

Your business model! Are you a local, short journey focused company or are you aiming at longer distance corporate work? 20% of my fleet would spend 80% of their time out of PMR range, no I have 100% in range 100% of the time.

If you are aiming local and can stick an aerial on your roof then you should be fine for a 5-10 mile radius. Otherwise PMR cost a lot more than people think.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

Yes Tom our mast and transmitter is at our office. I have a combiner setup using 4 channels giving good coverage and 99.9% of our work is local.

Like I said I'd like a PMR for local work and GPRS with a sim card for out of area work. This can also be a good style of set up if one decides to go belly up. On PMR we were never down, since GPRS and PDA's I've lost count how many times we've been down on connections.

In nearly 4 years of using PDAs, I've hardly ever been off.
On the occasions we were off, usually with Mercury, it was the PC's that had crashed.
Maybe your PDAs aren't set up correctly

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Datamaster don't need a sales team, they have happy customers doing it for them
Nidge for Prime Minister

TheBishop,
If this is your current setup and its working for you and your not paying for landlines etc then it might be best to stay this way. It seems your operation and that of Tom is different due to the business you guys are doing. Will be interesting to see what the outcome is.

Paul