PassTime’s move into GPS tracking was dependent on more than just the availability of the technology.
In the early 2000s, GPS technology was available, but analog was expensive and unreliable. As technology moved from analog to 2G networks and later generations, the cost, coverage, and power requirements began to change. Those changes helped make GPS practical for more applications and gave PassTime a path to combine location technology with the collection tools it had already developed.
PassTime President & COO, Chris Macheca, describes the transition to 2G as the point when nationwide use became more practical.
I think that transition from analog to 2G was kind of the kickoff of this idea that, hey, this is a technology that can be used nationwide, everywhere, and we want to be able to deliver it everywhere. And 2G was that kind of leap in technology that allowed the carriers to do that.
Chris explains that cost was a major part of that change.
When wireless technology started expanding – cell phones, pagers, and all that – it was pretty cost-prohibitive. When the networks evolved from analog to digital, what they call 2G or second-generation networks, the GSM networks, the costs started to come down. What 2G really did for the industry was make it affordable for more types of applications. So, not just your cell phone, where you’re paying $30, $40, $50 a month, and back then even more. We were allowed to leverage the infrastructure that was built out with those networks for a cheaper cost. That made it affordable and created a greater ROI for the subprime industry and just as a whole.
PassTime CEO & Founder, Jake Frank, recalls the company began seeing more competition around 2000 to 2003, but the available technology didn’t quite meet the standards PassTime wanted to maintain.
We really started to get a lot of competition in the early 2000s, around 2000 to 2003, with the advent of GPS. But at the time it was analog, and we were very reluctant to get into GPS for several reasons. One, because it was analog and very unreliable. It was very expensive. Here we were building a company on quality and service. No matter who our manufacturers were – we had different manufacturers over time – they were all OEM manufacturers, ISO 9000. We were building our reputation on quality. Did we really want to step into that part of the industry when we knew how unreliable it was? So we really held off, even though we sort of knew that was probably the future. We weren’t sure at that time that it was the right time.
The move to 2H helped answer some of the concerns Jake describes. Digital networks lowered the cost of using existing cellular infrastructure, while broader coverage made it more realistic to support GPS devices across a much wider area.
Moving to digital networks opened new possibilities, but it also created demands that carriers had not necessarily planned for. Chris describes the work required as the number of connected devices grew.
I think the growing pains were obviously trying to do something that had never been done before: putting tens of thousands of devices on a network in a specific area that never saw traffic volume of that size. Specifically, when it was 2G and then advanced to 3G and even 4G, a lot of times they didn’t contemplate 400,000 or 500,000 cars in one lot connecting to one tower at the same time. Those are things we had to work through with the carriers and really educated them on these applications and how we were utilizing the technology so that they could adapt the networks to work in this environment.
Each network generation changed what a connected tracking device could realistically do. The growth in coverage made more locations reachable, while improved power efficiency made it possible to build devices that did not need a constant connection to a vehicle’s power source.
Chris uses PassTime’s Encore device to show how far these power improvements have taken the technology.
It’s why we’ve got devices like this Encore device today, which is very, very power efficient. This device was probably unheard of when we launched our first device, or couldn’t even be conceived of back then. To think of a device that small with a battery that can last up to five years is just incredible.
The network transition also allowed PassTime to bring together two technologies that had developed along somewhat separate paths. Jake describes how the company’s collection and GPS technologies came together in PassTime’s Elite product.
At that point, we had our collections technology, and then we now had GPS technology. PassTime Plus was our big collection technology. Shortly after that, we launched Elite, where we took both technologies – our collections technology and our GPS technology – and combined them into one unit. Now you had the best of both worlds. You had the collection, and you had the repossession technology. That’s where we really took a big step, because we weren’t a one-pony company. We started to develop a suite of products.
Combining those capabilities marked an important step in PassTime’s product development. The company was no longer offering collection technology and GPS as separate ideas. Elite brought them together in a single device and helped establish the broader product suite Jake describes.
Looking back, the transition from analog networks to 2G made GPS more affordable and more widely available. The later moves to 3G, 4G, and 5G expanded coverage, supported more connected devices, and significantly reduced power demands. Those changes helped PassTime move from its original collection technology into GPS and beyond.
The technology kept changing, but the pattern remained consistent: PassTime waited until it could support the quality and service the company had built its reputation on, then used each network generation to expand what its suite of products could do.
