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June 29, 2004/
The Orange County Register Stephen Petilli doesn't worry about getting lost, even when he's driving in unfamiliar territory. He's chief executive officer of Networks in Motion, a start-up company in Irvine, Calif., that has turned cell-phone handsets into personal navigators. He carries a prototype mobile phone that literally tells you where you are and how to get where you're going. When he flew to San Jose, Calif., for a recent meeting in Palo Alto, Calif., he didn't bother to get directions in advance. He simply rented a car, entered his destination into his cell phone, and glanced at the full-color map and directions on its screen. He wanted to keep his eyes on the road, so he turned on the phone's speaker, which read him turn-by-turn directions. So far, these souped-up phones aren't available, but NIM (another name for the company) is already selling less powerful versions of its service. Its most advanced product, AtlasTrack, works with Global Positioning System satellites and Nextel's wireless network, allowing businesses to monitor employees' whereabouts. It's designed to track messengers, cable TV installers, construction workers, sales personnel, and other workers who are constantly out in the field. Radio chips in the phones send messages to the home office as often as once a minute, allowing a dispatcher to: _Identify the location of the phone, and whether it's stationary or moving. _Pull up maps that show the current location of all employees. _Click on the name of a particular worker to get a map of the route traveled that day, along with specific addresses visited, and even the vehicle's speed at any particular moment. _Get an automatic warning whenever a driver is stuck in traffic or speeding. Employee-tracking cell phones are an expansion of electronic monitoring conducted by many companies. Techniques include audio and video surveillance, as well as routine screening of e-mail and Web use. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer advocacy group in San Diego, generally opposes use of such technologies, except in cases where employers have good reason to suspect an employee of wrongdoing. But the use of GPS is a reasonable way for companies to manage mobile work forces, according to Beth Givens, the group's director. "There are good business reasons for using it. But it must be coupled with a very robust privacy policy," she said. Companies should clearly communicate those policies to all employees, and never use GPS data as the sole basis for documenting negative reports on a worker, she said. For example, if a GPS system were to alert a dispatcher that a truck driver was regularly speeding, a supervisor should discuss the matter with that employee so that there's an opportunity for the worker to dispute the data. The company should have clear policies on disciplinary actions made as a result of that information, once it's confirmed to be accurate, Givens said. "No technology is flawless," she said. The NIM dispatch system monitors drivers, but doesn't give them directions. NIM plans to introduce its wireless navigation systems later this year. It's one of several companies developing products that use GPS to help with navigation. In March, a prototype of its AtlasBook Mobile navigation system won a gold medal in a contest that's essentially the Olympics of GPS devices. After testing products from a group of semifinalists on the streets of Atlanta, judges awarded NIM the grand prize. That title could give NIM a leg up as it competes for business with rivals such as @Road of Fremont, Calif., which has long been selling less sophisticated and bulkier tracking systems known as black boxes. It offers a fleet management service that also works on Nextel phones. NIM is also going up against wireless industry heavyweight Motorola Corp., which last year introduced a turn-by-turn cellular navigation system dubbed Viamoto. In April NIM introduced AtlasBook Places, a $4.25-a-month service for consumers that works on the Verizon Wireless network. Unlike Viamoto, the NIM product doesn't work with GPS satellites. Instead, it provides maps and driving directions that come from a Web browser, plus yellow pages searches. Verizon Wireless isn't heavily promoting the product. NIM's business product, AtlasTrack, has been on the market for about a year and has a small but loyal following. The Shredders is one of about 25 customers, using NIM's service to manage a fleet of 10 trucks that pick up confidential documents from businesses all over Southern California. When a driver gets behind on a route, he calls the dispatcher, who pulls up a map on the Web to locate another truck that's nearby. That truck can handle the next few pickups while the first truck gets back on schedule. "This is phenomenal stuff. It's just marvelous," said Shredders President Jerry Martin. He pulled out a black-box system, which cost him more than $25,000 to install. That technology typically costs about $40 a month per handset in maintenance and service fees. AtlasTrack is less expensive. It costs about $500 to install the needed Map Messenger software, $150 for each GPS-enabled handset, and about $35 a month per phone. Martin's favorite function alerts dispatchers when drivers backtrack on a route. With gasoline prices at record levels, the company can't afford to waste fuel. Penhall Co., an Anaheim, Calif., concrete cutting and demolition company, is testing the NIM system in Southern California and North Carolina. While it mainly uses the service to track its equipment and fleet of trucks, the Map Messenger software provides data on how much time each worker spends at a job site. That's useful for billing and payroll processing. "Basically we're using it to track our assets," said Penhall Information Services manager Jerry Humble. Four-year-old NIM still faces stiff challenges _ it currently works with only two cell-phone systems and it doesn't expect to turn a profit before the third quarter of next year. Petilli, 36, can afford to stick around. He says he's still got plenty of money in the bank, from his share of the sale of Pivotal Technologies, a chip company that Petilli co-founded. Broadcom bought that company in May 2000 for about $250 million. A major investor in NIM, Petilli wouldn't say how much he's put into the company, or how much it's raised so far. NIM is now looking to raise more money to fund its efforts to get a foothold in the emerging market for GPS-enabled cell phones and other so-called location-based services such as AtlasTrack. Only Nextel and Verizon Wireless currently work with NIM, and neither supports real-time navigation. But Petilli is working overtime to make the talking GPS service available on all wireless networks. "We're hoping a carrier will deploy it as soon as possible," he said. ___ (c) 2004, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.). Visit the Register on the World Wide Web at http://www.ocregister.com/ Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. |
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