Prices Will Increase With Further
Growth, Analysts Say
LOS ANGELES (May 15, 2008) — More than one-third of the national school bus fleet may have tracking systems within the next six years, analysts from Frost and Sullivan said during a Wednesday afternoon conference call. High upfront costs coupled with tight state and local school budgets challenge the growth of the remote school bus tracking and data collection tool. But, increasing interest in security and route efficiency will bring the tool to as many as 37.4 percent of buses by 2014, Frost and Sullivan analyst Neelu Singh said. Today, the system is on approximately 8.8 percent of school buses.
Singh noted that this expansion will decrease the prices of hardware, to around $442 by 2014 from a 2007 manufacturing cost of around $463 per unit. While service fees will decline between now and 2010, those fees will increase between 2011 and 2014, as more systems with more features demand more bandwidth.
In the short term, the greatest challenge for industry GPS providers Zonar, Synovia, Radio Engineering Industries and others will be educating pupil transporters and parents about the technology and a potential return on investment due to fuel savings. Singh cited high replacement and renewal rates as evidence for satisfaction with the technology.
When asked about data privacy, Sandeep Kar, heavy-truck program manager, said concerns about safety will negate privacy qualms. Though, Kar noted, there had been some regulatory concerns about who would own the collected data. Kar said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is currently investigating this.
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