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Global e Networks React - Monitoring and Media
Global e Networks offers Vehicle Forensics (VF), a product which is designed to take a share of a growing market. Leasing and insurance companies are keen to monitor their vehicles remotely using Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and high end manufacturers are already fitting the boxes to their new cars in anticipation of potential demand for additional content-rich services such as voice, text and video.
The VF units are anticipated to provide an immensely effective advertising medium. Global e Networks will look to target hire car companies, with the aim of installing a VF unit that can provide useful information – as well as targeted advertising – through the television screens that are now already fitted to many cars. The power of this channel should not be underestimated, as the VF unit will know exactly where the vehicle is which can assist in the provision of specific advertising, and could then be easily targeted at a specific area or end-user. Meanwhile, the Hire car company is able to track the car to ensure that the vehicle is remaining within the terms of the hire agreement.
Already, insurers such as Norwich Union have begun to offer premium reductions to those drivers who have such a VF unit installed. The kind of criteria which can be measured includes the geographical position of the vehicle, and the amount of time drivers spend at the wheel. This has ramifications for the way in which drivers are monitored, and also in the measurement of vehicle speeds within the legal limit.
Not surprisingly, governments are looking very seriously at this, and there is pressure to make road users accountable for the way in which roads are used. In the UK, the Government is now considering the merits of introducing road pricing, which may lead to a requirement for tracking devices being fitted to cars. If this were compulsory then it would certainly cause the market for VF to expand significantly.
Global e Networks has manufactured the VF units in conjunction with its Chinese partner Transit Communications. With each unit shipped comes a license for specific country road maps for the customer to provide to its end user and access to the unique server software to allow monitoring of hundreds of vehicles to the customer, through Global e Networks 24/7 Network Operations Centre.