Call Sign March 2011 - Page 4 - Reflections of the Chairman

AGM
Another AGM has come and gone and I must say that once again everyone present was impeccably behaved and seemed genuinely interested in what was happening - not just to Dial-a-Cab, but to our trade in general.
I believe that elsewhere in the magazine there is a report regarding the AGM but just to say that the existing Board were returned and as I’ve already said, everyone present conducted themselves in a proper manner and it was a real pleasure to be present on the day, unlike years gone by when the meetings often became a platform for agitators in an endeavour to discredit whomever they fancied making derogatory remarks against. Fortunately those would be agitators have now moved on and the Society has returned to the fair-minded moderate members…

New terminals
Whenever I’m thinking of a topic to write about and the thoughts are not too forthcoming, I tend to give you an update regarding the new terminals as that always seems to be popular.
So where are we at the moment? Well, as most of you know, we will be moving from our Private or Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) to General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), which is a public service such as O2 and Vodafone.
The advantages are that the signals are very fast and also nationwide, so you will be able to clear a trip wherever you are. In addition the cost is also extremely competitive against maintaining our own PMR. Just as with your mobile telephone, our taxis will be equipped with a SIM card, however, unlike those in your mobile phone these SIMs will be data only and not voice, which will make them useless to anyone other than someone who wishes to
transmit data only.

Otherwise the SIM cards could become a target for anyone wishing to steal them - as I am led to believe there is quite a market for these items.
   The taxis will also be equipped with chip and pin and contactless and of course a printer. When we began fitting our current terminals in June 2000, they were so cutting edge that we had to have them specially made, consequently we thought it a good idea to include a printer which was not mandatory at the time. However, it is now mandatory for taxis to have a printer, but terminals/tablets have progressed so rapidly that there is not any need to have them bespoke; the only problem is that they do not come with a printer.
   So the problem we now have is that as we have supplied a printer in the past and unless we continue to do so, it will be seen as a retrograde step by members, which will then lead to another problem.
   We would like to supply our members with a combined chip/pin, contactless and printer, but we would like to have it mounted in the front of the cab in a holster. We believe the majority of customers would come to the luggage door to pay, unless there is inclement weather when they would obviously prefer to remain in the back of the taxi. This is where the problem arises, as the combined machine will not pass through the partition opening on a TX2.
   Consequently, we have made a tentative approach to LTPH regarding the situation. They have already passed

the Verifone system,
which will be installed in the back of the vehicle. It may be that will be the only place the machine will be allowed to be stationed, but we disagree with the location, as we believe it could compromise driver safety.
   A driver at night should be locked in the front of his vehicle, but with the chip and pin in the back of the vehicle the driver could be enticed to exit his locked compartment to give assistance with the machine and that clearly could lead to a problem!
   Regarding contactless, the way it works at the moment - although I believe it will change - is that a member of the public can use their credit card for a transaction up to £15 by just passing it over the machine, similar to an oyster card. You will be allowed to make three of these transactions before you have to enter a valid pin number at the fourth transaction in order to make the card ‘live’ for the next three transactions. Of course, should you exceed £15 on any one transaction, a pin number will have to be inserted into the machine.
   As you can see, things are quite busy at the moment as there are quite a number of companies we are talking to in an attempt to take this project forward.
   So when is this all going to happen? At the moment our programmers are rewriting our Mobile Data Terminal (MDT) software from Visual Basic (VB) to .net and this is proving to be quite a task - basically that is the software on your terminal.
   When that has been completed and tested to our satisfaction, we will then embark on equipping the fleet with new hardware. When that will be? I am not exactly sure, however, I am hopeful that we will begin fitting later this year.

Brian Rice
Chairman,
Dial-a-Cab