GTE launches WIN 4

GTE is chasing the telemetry market with its WIN 4 network, commercially launched at the end of March. GTE pieced together the nationwide network by partnering with 30 regular wireless voice carriers. The WIN 4 network currently covers 99% of the U.S. and 100% of the Canadian population and will use standard voice channels to carry data traffic.

With the launch of service, GTE announced its first customer-OnStar, the automotive safety service currently deployed in 12 General Motors models this year.

WIN 4 holds some advantages over other available telemetry offerings. Phil Forbes, assistant vice president for carrier relations at GTE Wireless, calls those advantages the three C's: cost, coverage and call delivery. When GTE started developing the concept for WIN 4, company officials believed it would have to meet user requirements in these three areas to be successful.

WIN 4 addresses the cost issue. "One thing we're doing is offering service in less than one minute rounding," Forbes said. Each connection on WIN 4 must have a 30-second minimum but is then rated in six-second increments. "It allows for short data to be used cost-effectively."

In addition, GTE handles clearing and billing for the partner operators. As a result, the partner operators have lower costs, which they can pass on to solution providers.

Lower costs can give GTE advantages over some competing telemetry systems, notably satellite-based offerings. "[Companies] tend to use satellites when it's cost-justified," said Darryl Sterling, an industry analyst at The Yankee Group. Some companies can justify the high cost of satellite telemetry offerings for applications such as remote meter reading where the satellite-based solution might cost less than sending an employee to the field.

As for coverage, GTE intends to achieve total coverage of the United States, though company officials acknowledge that the last 1% may be challenging. "If you think about such things as automatic notification of air bag deployment, it has to work as effectively in west Texas as in New York City, so coverage is very important," Forbes said.

Using voice channels has advantages because they are real-time. Applications such as OnStar would likely rule out paging-based telemetry or data-only networks such as BellSouth Mobile Data because they aren't real-time, Sterling noted.

Because WIN 4 can use any technology, including analog or digital services, partner carriers might choose to use their analog networks. With increasing numbers of subscribers switching to digital, the analog networks are emptying out, Sterling noted. "They would be making use of an asset that is already there, so the revenue stream is just gravy."

The final C, call delivery, refers to overcoming fraud issues. Fraud can be more difficult to combat with a telemetry system based on cellular rather than regular voice cellular applications. For example, some fraud-combating techniques require users to key in a personal identification number. This wouldn't work for an application such as OnStar, which automatically notifies a help center about activities such as air bag deployments. Such triggers will connect a worker at the center via voice to the car to determine the safety of the passengers.

But because the OnStar application does not include calls to anywhere but to the OnStar help center, it might be simpler to control fraud than some other applications. GTE has set up a fraud mechanism on its platform that allows it to look at data in real time.

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