You know how quickly cell phone bills can add up if you provide GPS tracking services. The more GPS trackers you connect, the stronger the desire to reduce these costs. The obvious solution is to get a discount from the operator. But what to do when this opportunity is exhausted?
The experience of Navixy partners shows that there are at least 5 opportunities to optimize traffic volume. Use these tips to cut costs by at least a third.
1. Optimize roaming costs
Use Internet roaming if your clients are engaged in international transportation. In this case, using dual SIM GPS terminals is a very effective way to reduce costs. When the terminal leaves the home region, the data is automatically transferred through the second operator, with cheaper overseas traffic. By the way, more and more two-terminal terminals are on the market. An example of this is the new series of Galileosky 7.0 terminals.
2. Use compound SMS commands
When a GPS tracker connects to a monitoring system, several parameters (from 3 to 20) are sent to the device: server IP, port, APN, etc. Often, to set one parameter, you need to send one SMS. However, leading device manufacturers support using binary and composite SMS commands.
Such messages can contain dozens of parameters, which helps to save a lot. For example, the number of SMS messages for the automatic configuration of Teltonika terminals in the Navixy system has been reduced by more than 7 times.
3. Apply GPRS commands
To configure GPS Car tracker, not only SMS but also a GPRS channel can be used. A short SMS message costs comparable to transferring one megabyte of data via GPRS. Using GPRS is much more profitable. Today, 9 of 10 equipment models supported in the Navixy platform are configured using GPRS commands.
4. Choose terminals with a WiFi module
If real-time surveillance is not critical for the client, offer him to use WiFi for data transmission. Usually, it works like this: when the cars return to the base, the GPS terminal connects to the native WiFi hotspot and transmits the information accumulated during the day. This solution is also useful in places where active use of cellular communications is undesirable (for example, at airports).
5. Change to UDP protocol
The lion’s share of the cost of cellular communication falls on GPRS traffic. Advanced manufacturers offer to reduce it by optimizing the data transfer format. For example, Queclink and Enfora devices support using the UDP protocol. Unlike TCP, it has a smaller overhead (service data size), and information integrity is guaranteed less expensively.
We are sure that there are other ways to reduce costs. For example, savings can come from connecting GPS tracking companies in Pakistan to IoT networks such as LPWAN. But as we have shown, even without such, for now, exotics, costs can be significantly reduced.
To do this, you need to thoroughly approach the choice of equipment and GPS monitoring platform and take into account the features of the problem being solved.
