Taxi Driver Online

On Monday we received a letter from Exel Management telling us of their new super duper quad band sim card which they are rolling out in a weeks time, they gave us all the usual bollox that their would be no dropped connections because we would be roaming between O2, Orange, Vodaphone, Tmobile and the 3 Network.

The boss just ripped it up and said bollox to them they've had far to much money out of us for a shit service, they aren't trying to squeeze anymore out of us for this.

Yesterday Exel were back on the phone and asked if we'd received the letter, faxes and Emails? The boss said yes and I've shredded them we don't want the dual sim because I've already paid you to much money over the years for a shit service you're not getting anymore out of me.

The guy from Exel said, I'll send you the papers again and I suggest you read them because your old SIM cards will be turned off by the end of November and will be useless.

When asked about the price of the quad band sim cards Exel turned round and said, "we don't know until January".

Basically they are conning firms into going onto the quad band sim card by turning their old sim cards off when there's no need.

Has any other firm out there been subjected to Exel's over zealous sales techniques?

Well it seems Cordic are pushing these quad band sim cards as well. Its going to be all the rage. Has anyone seen any costs from them?

Also if you sign up with your data system provider then your tied in yet again.

Why not just tell them to poke the whole thing?

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We’ve been testing a quad band sim over the last three months but we only tried it on one company and saw no dropouts so we never actually got to see if it change network. In essence, it’s a none UK sim so it works the same as you going overseas where your device just finds a network to use and the reciprocal agreements between network providers takes care of the billing.

The problem we found was that the data allowance on these devices tends to be on the low side with heavy penalty charges for going over the limit. Our testing confirmed that they’re fine for the older Windows mobile devices but an Android could eat the allowance in less than a day if your not careful. Given the cost of both Android devices and data these days, I think it would be far more cost effective to use a dual sim device given that it’s highly unlikely that two major networks will ever fail at the same time.

Bill

Yes we've just had it. Apparently all the Sims in the pods will be switched of at the end of November. So you HAVE to have the new quad Sim in or your system wont work. And yes they cant tell you the price till January yes 3 months after you've signed up for them Which just dosnt make sense on any kind of business level whatsoever . And while in not trying to wake a sleeping dog (nidge) the system works well for us (still cant produce a invoice though) but is spoilt by exel trying to just get more and more out of us. The only person that we get any meaningful sense out of is the salesman tony Dixon who has fought our corner with the exel finance dept on many occasions so if you do have to deal with them then hes the guy to talk to. Well i guess nidge iis awake now and chewing his way through the keyboard (ha ha) so best move the family into the air raid shelter.

You can take your hard hat off mate I'm all nice and chilled today.

We did some more comprehensive testing yesterday at a company who were having problems with Vodafone in one of their main working areas. Vodafone had confirmed that a mast had been down there for several weeks and couldn’t give a time scale for repair, so it was an ideal opportunity to see if the roaming sim could solve this type of problem.

Cutting a very long story short, the magic sim did bugger all and in fact appeared considerably worse than our standard reference devices that performed flawlessly. We suspected this might be the case so, unless our roaming sim wasn’t quite as magic as what’s being offered here, then I doubt this “solution” is going to be very effective.

I've spoken with the sim provider and they accept that in densely populated urban areas, it’s highly unlikely that the device would roam once locked to a specific network and as far as they knew, all roaming devices work on the same principle. I’ve tried to contact the company supplying the sims to Mercury to confirm this but as yet they've not returned my call.

Interesting

Bill

Cheers for that Bill you're a star.

Bill
Is this the same 4 network sim that Cordic are also pushing to everyone? I hear that they are charing £10 a month for each one. Would be cheaper to have two sims than that one. It seems that this is going to be all the rage. I wonder if they can use 3g yet or stil stuck on GPRS like some others?

Yes it's the same SIM card Paul, they're advertising all the Networks like 3, Vodaphone, O2, Orange and TMobile. Like Bill said earlier it's just a roaming sim like when you go abroad.

There's nothing good about it it's another way for them to get more money out of the trade.

Thanks, thought as much. I looked at some of these, called M2M when I found a company but they charged for incoming calls. Not cheap at all and if you went over the limit, god help you.

Found this mob (funny thing is I found a newspaper article on RNLI and they had donated free sim cards to them).... http://www.podsystem.com/

Bill Customers at the Prices you Set

Set your own tariffs and link them to specific products
Create invoices of usage
Bill your customers automatically at the end of the month
View itemised billing in real time
Control and modify the currency different customers are billed in
View your own costs as well as current and historical customer invoices
Create pre-pay as well as post-pay packages

I did mean to say that its certainly an increased cost and if you have 300 cars thats £3000 per month, we looked at the idea of phones with dual sims or even using one of the devices that allows us to use two sim cars in one phone, that works out about £15 for the device and then about £6 for the data (between the two sims that is). So thats only £1800 a month.

So over 5 years you pay £180,000 with the roaming sim (as long as you dont go over your limit) and £108,000 to do it with dual sim. Thats £72,000 saving over five years.

Also I would rather be paying a telecom company that say Cordic or Mercury becuase if I decide to leave them I dont have to argue about contracts for the sims etc. Not sure I would want my dispatch provider to bill me for my mobile data.

PD

Paul

Just a little more info for you to ponder over. Firstly the term M2M is a term used to describe networks dedicated specifically for data use rather than for Joe Public who generally wants to brows the internet. These networks are used extensively for emergency services and remote monitoring where high speed and high throughputs of data are not the primary goal. All providers can offer this type of robust network but the bandwidth (the amount of data used) and it’s cost does tend to limit it’s usefulness. In the case of the RLNI, their data usage is likely to be next to nothing so to give them free sims is really just a publicity thing.

It’s all too easy to get confused with M2M services and roaming technology if you don’t fully understand how they work. We’ve done testing using the POD systems devices and been in discussions with the company claiming to supply both Mercury and Cordic and the sims are all basically the same. It sounds good to have four independent networks but the reality is that they will not roam unless there’s a total loss of signal, which is fine if your working in the mountains of Scotland or the Welsh valleys but in urban environments that’s never going to happen. So the bottom line is you end up with simply an M2M sim linked through somewhere like Vodafone Germany with probably more chances of a routing failure when you could have got the same from a UK source.

The amount of data used by a taxi dispatch system is just about low enough for M2M use but it is a compromise on how a system works. We use a lot more data than say Mercury but we update far more often because that’s what the customers expect. Even so typical usage is only about 12 megabytes per month but a multi-shifted vehicle would run just over 20 meg. But that’s history because the newer Android devices that everyone will ultimately end up using, runs up to ten times that amount so these sims just wouldn’t be viable. So your assement is correct, go for the dual sim option.

Bill

Thanks Bill. It really looks like its a non-starter and just another way for some companies to make more money. I have also heard that some of the companies are charging for text messages and you cant put your own sim in or you cant get your own supplier. The thing is when you look at one companies website it does not mention these costs at all or how the texts are paid for.

I have gone off some of the companies I have looked at, not because of the system but the way the system is sold and when you start asking hard questions they dont like it at all and come out with some right old BS. Recently told that Company A had switched from another provider and was working away happly. Called Company A only to be told they had not even installed the kit in the cars yet. Not good by the data supplier at all. Do these guys honeslty think we (the buyers) will not check these things out.

Paul

Well you can’t blame companies for trying to make more money, we’d all like to do that but the roaming sim thing is a bit like Jack swapping his cow for magical beans.
On the face of it, it sounds like a magical solution but the reality is that either they've not done their homework or are simply using it as a sales gimmick. We don’t supply sims, so we’re not bothered, we simply advise where good deals are to be had and to avoid long contracts. In any case, I believe that ultimately, personal devices will do away with the need for the companies to supply dedicated devices all together and the minuscule amount of data used won’t even be considered.

As for companies changing, that happens, even with us but I’d like to think that it’s generally a case of them thinking the grass is greener on the other side of the hill. Whenever this happens, few will ever admit to making an expensive mistake but ask again in a few years time and it’s often a different tale. I spoke recently to a large company in Birmingham who had just moved to Cordic. Prior to that they had used three other companies and each time had used the logic that biggest was always the best but many years down the line they finally realised that throwing huge amounts money at the problem doesn’t always work.

Good luck with your quest though Paul and credit to you for trying to see through the BS.

Bill.