AT&T intros RFID services

AT&T announced Monday it is rolling out three sensor services aimed at helping businesses track everything from fleets of vehicles to shipments of goods.

The services debut just a year under when AT&T first launched RFID offerings, which the carrier says were delivered on a trial basis. Those services went live six months after the carrier announced it was working with a BEA Systems, Intel, Motorola and NCR to develop an RFID ecosystem that AT&T could use to launch and support RFID services.

After trials that lasted three to four months, the carrier learned customers were happy with its professional services and upfront evaluations. But that there were “problems managing [RFID] readers on an ongoing basis and the data they transmitted back,” says Ebrahim Keshavarz, vice president of product management and business development.

Some of the problems AT&T encountered were due to lack of standards for RFID readers, Keshavarz says. “The data coming back from the readers wasn’t clean. We took down the environment and brought it back to the labs to do additional work.”

Now AT&T is focusing more on providing services that allow customers to better track assets anytime and anywhere, he says.

The new Mobile Resource Management offering lets companies track fleets of vehicles using GPS technology. The hosted service not only provides information on where the vehicles are, but also fuel usage and speed. The GPS data is transmitted over AT&T’s wireless network (formerly Cingular Wireless).

Sprint is offering a similar vehicle location service, but specifically for school buses.

The new RFID Asset Visibility offering provides customers with real-time information on the location of high-ticket items like crash carts or even patients in a hospital. This information is transmitted over a local or campus Wi-Fi network.

The third new service, a managed passive RFID solution, is designed for managing entire shipments, by pallet or bundle, of items rather than tagging individual items, Keshavarz says.