at&t vs Jasper

[doctormstein1]

From what I understand the new 340 live is going to have the at&t chip network while the 740 has the jasper chip network Does anyone have any ideas of the differences as well as the idea as to why tomtom changed to at&t which i understand Garmin is also going to use. What are the differences of one over the other. Thanks

 

[mvl]

Jaspar is a reseller of airtime, and I heard they recently signed an exclusive deal with AT&T in the US. So the service quality should be identical.

I suspect a lot of discussions are going on behind the scenes on costs, etc. Remember Tomtom has to pay a data bill when we buy a $10/month live subscription, so they are probably continuing to renegotiate for best cost.

Given that AT&T says in their phone contracts that they have the right to track customer cell phone locations for traffic data purposes, I wouldn't be surprised if they are very close to an HD traffic launch. Trafficcast gets a per-device fee for their Tomtom 740 traffic, but no announcement was made regarding the 340 live launch. Instead, AT&T said they will be working on future live services with Tomtom. So there's a chance that the 340 live will launch with HD traffic via AT&T.

 

[gatorguy]

I also think the agreement has more to do with costs than anything else. In addition, Jasper has recently been making their software integration available directly to the telcoms, so my guess is that they're still involved indirectly. Garmin will also be using AT&T for the 1690 live (AT&T's gotta be cheaper with Garmin figuring to profit at $5 a month for live services), but both the TT and Garmin Live devices appear to have an agreement for Edge delivery only and not 3G. That would kind of indicate to me that AT&T isn't planning for any of these connected pnd's to use much bandwidth/data. Rolling out HD traffic under the existing agreement doesn't seem likely to me. (What is HDTraffic anyway?) I'd also be pretty shocked if location data flowing back from Garmin live devices to AT&T will be sent to TomTom for their exclusive use.

 

[doctormstein1]

I also think the agreement has more to do with costs than anything else. In addition, Jasper has recently been making their software integration available directly to the telcoms, so my guess is that they're still involved indirectly. Garmin will also be using AT&T for the 1690 live (AT&T's gotta be cheaper with Garmin figuring to profit at $5 a month for live services), but both the TT and Garmin Live devices appear to have an agreement for Edge delivery only and not 3G. That would kind of indicate to me that AT&T isn't planning for any of these connected pnd's to use much bandwidth/data. Rolling out HD traffic under the existing agreement doesn't seem likely to me. (What is HDTraffic anyway?) I'd also be pretty shocked if location data flowing back from Garmin live devices to AT&T will be sent to TomTom for their exclusive use.

Thanks for your imput. I would think that even though Garmin and tomtom are both using at&t what will be different is the other imputs into the traffic that would be different between the two companies such as commercial trucks, road, sensors, and other type comerical fleet imputs. I'm just guessing though. Another question that I have is will the 740 with jasper continue to get as much information as can be provided by at&t. For me dual chips would be best but cost may make it unreasonable.