Sept/Oct 2003

As the track-by-mobile phone market builds up (m.logistics, last issue), FleetOnline is claiming it is the clear market leader in the UK. It says it already has over 40,000 subscribers, and is running the most heavily-used service of its kind.

It also maintains that its "positioning" fee of around 21p (the cost of obtaining a single updated position report on a mobile unit) is among the lowest in the industry. There is no initial registration fee.

However, rival Verilocation has come back back with a robust package of enhancements to its original service. You can now track up to five phones a month for a registration fee of just £5, and there's an annual plan costing £50 that covers ten phones and includes ten free "tracks" a month. Credits cost 20p per track.

Verilocation is now allowing users to register on the Internet and start tracking "within minutes", and has also added scheduled tracks to its service, and integrated it with a simple map-based routing system.

Companies in this market all make use of the fact that accredited organisations can obtain fairly accurate geographical position reports from mobile phone network providers for any mobile unit whose user has agreed to being tracked by them. This is a form of location-based service, or LBS.

Users sign on with the service, and then usually obtain position reports through secure access to a special Web site.

The latest application of this facility is to track multiple mobiles at the same time, and use the results to produce near-real time information on traffic flows. German developer PTV demonstrated such a system at the Frankfurt Motor Show this month, working with Siemens VDO.

FleetOnline has obligingly supplied a comparison chart showing its progress compared with that of some of its rivals (see above).

FleetOnline is run by the Dutch-based Teydo Company. Verilocation is run by Overview Mapping.