Re: This road pricing scam


"Cynic" <cynic_999@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4f40v2hcr99l9o170fbld3kfhj6e0stt7v@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 11:55:07 -0000, "tim....."
<tims_new_home@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

the BOM for a GPS/MP3 capable GSM phone (which has
all the necessary bits to make a GPS location receiver and
data transmitter) is about 100 dollars. This includs 15 dollars
for a colour screen, 15 dollars for loads of memory to store
MP3s on and about 6 dollars for the battery and charging
circuitry, none of which is needed for this application.

Component cost is only one part of the cost of manufacture. Cost of
manufacture is only one part of the retail selling price.

In quantities of 1-2 million, I reckon you could make one
now for about 60 quid.

Quite possibly. What sort of markup do you anticipate the retailers
will put on top of that?

What retailers? If road charging comes off they are going to be
installed in cars from new as compulsory equipment, almost
certainly to a common EU spec.

The Dutch are leading this race, they expect to have a fully
working road charging system by, IIRC 2011, someone's going
to have to develop the boxes.


Not sure how they'd then upload the data.

in a GPRS data packet

Who pays for the cellnet call?

HMG will enter into a bulk contract. A penny a message,
perhaps 2p, does it matter who pays?

What happens with vehicles that spend
almost all their time out of range of a cellphone base station? How
often will every vehicle be phoning home, and what impact will those
calls have on the capacity of the cellular network being used?

These are not insoluable problems. The capacity one isn't
even an issue. With 3G selling like cold porridge there's more
than enough capacity for a few more messages.

ISTM that a GPS based system would be subject to fairly simple
disabling that, even if detected (which would be difficult in itself),
could be plausibly denied.

Yep, this is a problem that needs to be ironed out. Enforcement
is going to be a big deal.

tim


.

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