InStep Mobile Communications Inc. announced it is collaborating with BC TEL Mobility, Mitsubishi Wireless Communications Inc. and Samsung Telecommunications to test a new wireless Internet dispatching solution.
A select group of customers in the Vancouver area are being offered a limited trial of the Internet Dispatch Service, a bundled service that would allow smaller businesses to send information to mobile workers using the Internet as the dispatch system.
To date, only larger companies like IBM, Federal Express and United Parcel Service have been able to afford implementing their own large mobile data dispatching systems. Such a dispatch system based on the Internet would allow companies that can’t afford their own system access to the same type of service through a shared Web site. To do so, a company logs on to the Web site, identifies itself and the workers it wishes to contact and enters the information it wants sent. The information then is sent from the Internet to workers equipped with smartphones provided by Mitsubishi and Samsung via BC TEL Mobility’s Cellular Digital Packet Data network.
During this period, trial customers are accessing BC TEL’s Mobility’s CDPD network via an Internet server operated by InStep. Exactly which company will host the Web site when the service becomes widely commercially available has yet to be determined, the company said. InStep may continue hosting it, BC TEL Mobility may or both may jointly host it through a third-party provider. Regardless, BC TEL Mobility said it will remain responsible for transferring the information.
“We’re hopeful that our upcoming trial of this service will prove this concept and enable us to offer service to the hundreds of (British Columbia) companies that require improved communications and information access with their mobile work force,” said Greg Cooke-Dalin, business development manager for BC TEL Mobility.
According to Dave Hunter, BC TEL Mobility market manager of wireless data, this trial is to determine the application’s market demand since the technology and the server-network integration have been proven.
Hunter added this is the first of a suite of Internet-based applications the company hopes to offer in the future aimed at all its vertical markets.
