Heavy Duty Trucking, April 2019

HDT APRIL 2019 48 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM MOBILE PLATFORMS ingredients of a trucking centered mobile platform are its ability to integrate with a companys existing back office and or other technologies currently in use and its ability to generate data that can be useful beyond its original purpose Integration Longtime mobile communications providers have been integrating their products with trucking management software providers for years providing GPS data for dispatch systems to use when assigning vehicles to loads That hasnt changed but the kinds of data generated by the vehicle and the driver now go way beyond location data and the flow now goes both ways I think integration has been key for years Witty says What we think these kinds of systems provide to companies is the value to the driver in interactions with customers and with dispatch Capturing the data is certainly one of the things he adds but there also are ways to push data back to drivers by automating some funcIn cab devices such as this Omnitracs unit provide the gateway between the driver and the back office while easing the drivers workload each day A current hot topic concerning mobile technologies is the sunsetting of 3G mobile networks Verizon announced it would end support for 3G devices by the end of the year and other major mobile service providers have said they plan to follow suit within the next year or two The reason for the sunset comes down to real estate or spectrum in the case of mobile service providers As companies kick in to high gear to develop 5G networks there isnt enough room in the radio frequency spectrum for older mobile technologies That means that any 3G mobile devices you may have deployed in your fleet wont be able to establish a mobile connection once all the major mobile service providers have closed down their 3G networks Its a critical issue says Eric Witty vice president of product management at Trimble Transportation Mobility Companies need to make plans for moving on to the next generation of devices For us its not a youve got to do it now or else We are kind of coaching ourselves for loss of coverage and degradation of service We are trying to plan for that As Witty points out there isnt a hard deadline like there is with ELDs but its something carriers need to start thinking about In our world its where is your wireless he explains In Trimbles case the wireless is inside the on board computer unit that is connected to the truck Many of the companys devices in the field are ready for 4G he said but some older ones are not and will need to be replaced Many mobile device vendors have already launched 4G devices Jason Penkethman chief product and strategy officer Spireon said his company has launched 4G devices that in some cases can fall back to 3G if a 4G network is not present in that area He recommends trucking companies develop plans for upgrading their fleet over time maybe during scheduled PMs for instance On the other hand the technology changes so quickly in the mobile space especially in consumer grade devices most drivers probably already carry a 4G smartphone Were keeping an eye on it of course weve pretty much depleted most of our inventory with 3G and are starting to send out LTE says Salem Elnahwy chief technology officer Transflo Many 3G devices will work until 2022 he notes so there is still time to plan The nice thing about it is that these units are fairly inexpensive he says Kind of like cell phones you might replace them every two to three years Then there are the benefits that 4G offers over the older technologies The networks allow more data to be sent more efficiently and at a lower cost As for the upcoming 5G it promises even more benefits Yet most observers see full implementation of that technology some way off in the future as mobile service providers have just begun developing their networks And the networks must come before the devices The bottom line If you have 3G devices deployed in your fleet start working on a plan to replace them SHOULD YOU WORRY ABOUT THE 3G PHASEOUT PHOTO JIM BEACHtions such as data entry The driver has some of his or her workload eased Instead of entering data into a device drivers simply validate what has been automatically filled in The data coming in from the vehicle is important beyond the telematics information Fleets can use it in a number of ways if that data is readily available to other parts of their systems