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[chrisgixer]

I think they mean every "new" Vauxhall, but anyway, here you go.

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/vauxhall/87759/every-vauxhall-to-get-onstar-advanced-connectivity-tech


Bothered?

[Sir Tigger KC]

Seeing as it needs 4G to work, it'd be pretty useless as there's plenty of places in Britain where you can't get any sort of mobile signal let alone 4G! 

[zirk]

Seeing as it needs 4G to work, it'd be pretty useless as there's plenty of places in Britain where you can't get any sort of mobile signal let alone 4G! 

Just means its 4G comparable, will fall back to 3.5G or 3G and then 2.5G (GPRS) with lack of coverage if using the Customers Sim, probably with some Value Added feature limitation which will be dependant on how much Data needs to be thrown around.

If it uses its own dedicated Sim wouldn't surprise me if its designed to work on the 2.5 GPRS Networks anyway. In Europe a lot of the major Networks now offer attractive Data Transfer or Paging Use to Commercial Organisations on GPRS. If your just number crunching or sending long or short status messages its a fast, proven and reliable way of transferring information.

London Buses uses O2 GPRS Network to AVL Track its 10,000 Buses in real time in a relatively confined area and send and receive status messages to each Bus without issues.

[Kevin Wood]

Yep, I've worked with a few developers of telematics boxes and 2G networks are their main focus. There's no need for any more bandwidth than 2G+GPRS can provide and you need a network that's likely to be available when and where the airbag goes off, so 3G and 4G are not remotely suitable yet.

As said, attractive deals for M2M devices like this are available now GPRS networks have been largely abandoned by "real" phone users wanting a usable interactive mobile internet connection.

[Rods2]

All they are doing is selling as an added value feature a system which the EU are making mandatory from 2015. Apparently, it adds about £80 to the car's manufacturing cost.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18677335

The system can be used to continuously track your car by GCHQ etc. the police for whatever reason if it has been reported stolen.

It can also be used for road pricing, which will happen sooner rather than later where fuel duty is the wrong side of the Laffer curve once there are more electric cars on the road. Expect fossil fuelled cars to pay both road pricing and fuel duty due to the climate cooling warming scam.