Is Cell-Phone GPS Tracking Cheaper?

I have talked to people that say they have been offered an unbelievably great deal for vehicle tracking by their cell phone carrier. Like most unbelievably great deals, it is usually too good to be true. In this article I am going to delve into why claims like this by the carrier aren’t all they are cut out to be.

PCS cellular phone carriers deal primarily with portable handsets. Many of these handsets have embedded GPS chips for the sole purpose of personal navigation, where the user wants the GPS signal. However, when the user has an application on the phone telling their boss right where they are, how do you think they are going to feel? Not too happy.  I have first-hand experience with this since one of the first applications my company built was to control the GPS receiver on a Nextel cellular phone, thus turning it into a personal tracker. Once the devices were distributed to company employees the problems began. Well, let me back up. Once the employees found out their phones were tracking them, the problems began. That’s a difference of about five minutes, since news travels fast when something like this is put into operation.

So, what did the employee do once they found out the phone was tracking them? They shut it off, turned the GPS receiver off, removed the program from the phone, put it under the seat to block the GPS signal, etc. The company found that the repair rate went up dramatically on phones with integrated GPS tracking. Maybe the employees just didn’t treat them as well because it was not a "friendly" device. You think?

Aside from the added cost of managing and repairing the cell phone with integrated GPS tracking, there are the actual costs charged by the carrier for this service. There is the cost of the monitoring service itself which is $10/mo/unit or more. This gives you access to a map to "see" the unit and the ability to run some basic reports. They usually try to upgrade you to the more expensive deluxe plan, you know the one that has the features you need, the one that you should be getting at the basic price point to begin with. In addition to this, and something they don’t like to talk about right up-front, is the data plan that you will need. That means more money. If you want to monitor your employee in real time or at least near real time, your data usage is going to be in excess of 1MB per month. You better check, this may cost you even more $$$.

Say the price really is good and you convinced your employees to cooperate, you are still going to have problems. Since your phone is constantly transmitting data, the battery life is going to suffer. In most cases, the phone won’t make it through the day on a single charge. That means more money for car chargers, spare batteries, and lost communication when they don’t have either one of those backups and the phone dies. Also, some phones will not communicate with the cellular system when they are transmitting data. So, if a call comes in while the device is transmitting, it goes right to voice mail. That won’t make the boss too happy. Finally, let’s take up the subject of reception and accuracy. Some cellular phone manufacturers, in an attempt to cut costs, use the phone’s antenna system for the GPS receiver. This is not ideal and the result is noticeably lower accuracy. There have been cases where the phone said the employee was in one spot when in fact they were in another 10 miles away. That can be embarrassing for the overzealous boss, and stressful for the employee.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news with respect to these types of real-time GPS vehicle tracking systems that the cell phone carriers call "management tools", but I know from experience that if it’s too good to be true, it’s not very good compared to a Dedicated, installed GPS Tracking System.