Taxi Driver Online

Good Evening ladies and gents,

First post so be gentle with me. We are looking at changing from our two way radio dispatch system to smartphones. Now we have had various sales talks and spoke with some folk at the PH show but with all sales folk I would not totally believe them, been there,done that, got the tshirt.

So the question that I really need answered is, how reliable are the smartphones, well networks for use for our fleet?

I have tried to google for information on networks going down but not much information at all. Also read various topics on here but not that much info as such.

Also there was some confusion at the show regarding networks, now this did mess my head up until I someone eventually explained to me about it all. There are two networks, one using GPRS and the other using 3G. Looking at things and knowing how much my kids use their smart phones, the 3G network is used for all the video streaming and things.

So folks whats the best then with networks and coverage plus costs (this is something else that seems to be a total minefield). Is there anyone using GPRS or 3G or both?

Look forward to the replies on this folks, might have some more questions as the discussion goes on (Oh and Nidge I know dont buy Mercury ...lol)

Oh location is the midlands.....

All the best....

Paul

Hi and welcome, Paul. We use O2, our rivals use vodaphone, yet another in the area, AFAIK, use orange. All with similar results. (we are based in Central Scotland) It really depends on the coverage in your area. I'm sure if you were to ask the right people in your area you would get a better picture. When you decide on a booking software they should be aware of the best option, in any case.

_________________
My heart is heavy, but my consience clear,
I voted Yes, without any fear.

Hi Allan,
Thanks. How reliable is the actual network work? I know by reading things that O2 had a major issue but would put that down to a one off thing I hope, but in a normal month whats it like? Do you ever get it were all drivers cant contact the base? (Dont mean from the office side of kit breaking or something like that, more the network).

Paul

All networks are down at midnight on New Year's Eve and frequently on Christmas Eve.

All networks have uncovered areas with no signal, depends very much on how Rural you are. It's extremely rare in Urban and Metropolitan Areas.

_________________
Don't dream it ~ Be it.

Hi Paul we work in the south of Birmingham using Datamaster on Vodafone. With regard to the actual network coverage i can say that we have been on Vodafone since October last year and in that time we have had 3 occasions where we have completely lost connection twice for about 3 hours and once for about 8 hours. We also had a period of 6 days where we had an intermittent(but just about workable)connection. I have a couple of O2 connections but havent really tested these consistently to give a proper opinion but they seem pretty much about the same as Vodafone. I would suggest you give Bill Green a call at Datamaster for a(no pressure) chat regarding the switch over to data as he will give you nothing but an honest opinion on what he thinks is the best way forward for your company. I was really unsure about moving over to data from voice but since implementing Datamasters system havent looked back. One thing I will have to say as a negative is that AVOID ACER E200 PDAS at all costs!!!!!
Vodafone also have a network board where you can check any faults in your area which I cant seem to find for other networks http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Network/ ... ingnetwork
With regards to costs like you say its a minefield but the prices are dropping on a regular basis and it all depends on what you want with the requirements of your system i.e voice options etc.


[quote="wee eddie"]All networks are down at midnight on New Year's Eve and frequently on Christmas Eve.

wee eddie I dont think this is neccesarily true??? I can honestly say we had no trouble whatsoever over the christmas/new years eve periods with network connections. Maybe we were lucky and perhaps other members here on the data networks may say different?
regards
Richard

We've had a couple of xmas/new years on Damaster using orange sims on the m2m network, and we haven't lost data at all. We have a drop out maybe a couple of times a year, but usually less than an hour.
I can second the fact that you should give Bill a call. He won't bull5hit you, and won't even try to sell you anything.

Just ask your punters what network they are on and is the signal strength any good.

Stay with Datamaster you won't go far wrong. Avoid all the others who are trying to sell you the world.

Well lets save a phone call and share my observations with everyone here.

Our first toe dip into the GSM pond wasn’t a particularly good experience. The networks back then were unreliable, prices were sky high and the amount of data available was very restricted and so for several years our recommendations were to steer clear of this technology and stick to conventional data. These days though it’s a whole different picture, with stable networks offering 100 times more data for a tenth of the cost and with equipment you can buy off the shelf from Asda one off for £32.

But back on the reliability issue though, personally I don’t think that any single network it’s quite as reliable as conventional data but on the other side of the coin, the additional benefits offered tend to balance things out. The key to the problem is having good backup plans in place to deal with the unexpected and this includes procedures as well as equipment.

Regarding which is the best network, well in my opinion that’s something that you just need to find out for yourself. We’ve had customers experiencing difficulties on say O2 and moving to Vodafone, while in other areas it’s exactly the opposite. So, it’s important when taking on a contract that you make it very clear that if the network proves to be unsuitable for your business then you have the option to move to another and not be contractually bound to that one network. Also take the network providers coverage maps with a huge pinch of salt because they only tell you where you should be able to get a good signal but they don’t show the capacity and this can be just as important.

Each provider (except 3) has two networks, 2G and 3G and most modern devices use both. The 2G network is the original mobile phone network and this gives the widest coverage and some would argue is the most reliable. The data rate is slower than on 3G but that’s academic as the amount of data being transferred is tiny (typical taxi use per month is about 12 megabytes). 3G is faster when say big map downloads are needed but it can give patchy coverage away from main towns. Both 2 and 3G networks should be independent but it is possible on rare occasions to loose both.

In short and to summarise, this is the future for communications technology in the taxi trade and you don’t really have any other choices if you want to keep up with the others.

Hope this helps and sorry if it’s a bit long winded.

Bill

PS Christmas and New Year is an old wife's tale. I've never seen any company suffer problems.

Thanks for all the replies so far. I like the vodaphone link to show network issues, wonder if other providers have the same sort of thing.

Yes price of data seems to vary a lot and also the cost of handsets as well.

I also agree that the day of buying a data unit off of a supplier to run only on a mobile network is virtually out of the window and I cant understand why someone would want to do it these days, but thats just my views.

We are looking for an Android system as Android seems to be the up and coming thing and so many handsets avaliable just now.

Another question, when the networks do have issues, what sort of backup is there? Now I have heard about the Cordic backup and others using Wifi as well.

Thanks guys

Paul

Paul

If your looking to buy new then Android is the only option at present as Microsoft’s new stuff just can’t do the job. They all work but given the cost of 500 meg of data these days being about £2 it’d make sense to find a decent dual sim device and that way your covered in case of a network outage. It’s highly unlikely that your ever going to find two major networks out of service at the same time.

Most devices can be set to use a wi-fi connection if one is detected and that way it saves a bit on the data allowance. Most people just use wi-fi to download their application software and mapping but whether or not it’d be any good as a backup is debatable as wi-fi hotspots aren’t always available when you're out and about.

Another point on reliability is your Internet connection and it makes sense here to have a backup connection with a different ISP via a dual router.

Bill

Not sure how it works exactly but our system (Auriga) uses radio as a default and switches automatically to GPRS when needed.

The PDA is plugged into the radio and whilst it can get a signal/is in range it uses this for all the data, if you lose radio signal, go out of range or use the out of car feature it then switches over to using GPRS. So most of the time it's using the radio but should I go far from base I can still receive messages and jobs. On our system the GPRS is used more as a backup than a primary feature.

Using GPRS as a backup to a PMR based system made sense when airtime costs were prohibitive and pda’s weren’t readily available. We actually thought about doing the reverse of this and developing a PMR interface as a backup for pda’s (very similar to what your using) but at £2 a month for a second sim card it just didn’t seem to make economic sense.

I for one am glad to see the back of PMR data if only because I now after 20 odd years of doing it, I don’t need to keep explaining how antennas break or why you can’t plug the radio into the fag lighter!

Bill

seldom happens. outwith be usual loss of service all mobiles suffer from, we only had a full no service when a 2G mast was being worked on. Luckily that happened after midnight on a Tues or Wed. so minimal impact to our company.

_________________
My heart is heavy, but my consience clear,
I voted Yes, without any fear.