[LINK] Mobile Phones on Telstra Network used for commercial Tracking

[Adam Todd]

Zero in on the business target


February 6, 2007
<http://www.smh.com.au/technology/next/>Next

Melbourne company Tenzeng's operations are truly mobile, writes Simon Sharwood.

PHOTO: Cheryl Quirion, managing director of Tenzeng, uses mobile phones to 
track the position of company cars and trucks. Picture: Drew Ryan
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THE humble mobile phone has emerged as a threat to the expensive GPS 
systems transport companies use to track their fleets.

Cheryl Quirion, managing director of Melbourne company Tenzeng, is one of a 
growing band of Australian companies using mobile phones to track the 
position of cars and trucks.

Such services, which allow businesses to locate assets and streamline jobs, 
have long been a staple of the transport industry, using in-vehicle global 
positioning system (GPS) units, which pinpoint cars or trucks to a matter 
of metres.

This allows them to ensure drivers comply with road safety laws while also 
enhancing a transport company's services by making them more predictable.

"Big retailers want to know when your truck left the warehouse and when it 
will arrive at their distribution hub," says Zack Chisolm, National Systems 
Manager for Roadmaster, a company that operates a fleet of 100 prime 
movers. But those reports do not come cheap. Mr Chisolm estimates that, "by 
the time the machine is installed in a truck it costs $1000 per unit". 
Additional costs are also required for supporting software.

At Roadmaster, that cost becomes difficult to justify at peak times for the 
transport industry when the company hires subcontractors to ensure it can 
meet demand. When it does so, it is still obliged to prove that drivers are 
observing the law and its customers still want the same level of service. 
Yet the prospect of spending $1000 to equip someone else's vehicle with GPS 
equipment is not pleasant.

Enter Tenzeng, GoFinder and LocateMy Communications Group, three companies 
that use Telstra's mobile networks to deliver the same kind of 
location-tracking offered by GPS, but instead require drivers to possess 
only a mobile phone.

"Telstra has a location platform in its GSM and Next G networks," Ms 
Quirion explains. "We take information from the cell tower about signal 
direction, strength and timing to determine where a mobile phone is located."

This data makes it possible to pinpoint a mobile phone to within 200 
metres, even if a driver goes indoors.

"You get fabulous accuracy outdoors with GPS," Ms Quirion says, "but once 
you go inside you cannot get tracking. You can still track mobile handsets 
even when they are indoors."

That combination of accuracy and availability excites Roadmaster's Zack 
Chisolm, who uses Tenzeng's service to offer the same level of service to 
Roadmaster clients whether it uses its own fleet or trucks from subcontractors.

Ms Quirion says further expansion in these services is expected. "We have 
relationships with other carriers to use their location capabilities," she 
says, and this will soon let the company launch cross-carrier services, 
whereby users can use Tenzeng's WorkScene or competing products regardless 
of the carrier their phones connect to.

The company is also preparing for the impact of assisted GPS, a technology 
that sees carriers blend data from their network with GPS information to 
enhance the accuracy and therefore the usefulness of phone-based location 
tracking.

"We know some carriers have plans for assisted GPS in 2007," Ms Quirion 
says. "That will be nirvana for logistics applications because you can 
consume assisted GPS without a handset upgrade."

Her company hopes these carrier initiatives will excite interest in asset 
tracking and has designed its WorkScene product to catch the wave. The 
product offers users web-based phone tracking, further reducing the cost of 
adoption and, Ms Quirion hopes, making it affordable for small businesses.

That prospect and the increasing prevalence and quality of these services 
has also excited Tenzeng's backers. The company's staff came from Sensis, 
where, Ms Quirion says, "we were the team responsible for whereis.com. We 
also did Sensis 1234 Directions for imode and WAP and the Holden Assist 
applications."

That track record and phone-based tracking's potential to supplant GPS 
systems and expand the market for such services helped the company secure 
venture capital funding.

"It is possible to get funding locally," Ms Quirion says, although the 
company also funded WorkScene's development through professional services 
engagements.

The future, however, seems rosy. "These services can save business money," 
she says. "If you know which of your fleet is closest to a job it saves 
time and petrol. Until now that kind of insight has only been available to 
big business. Now the information . . . is available for all."