InformationWeek

June 21, 1999

UPS Upgrades Data-Delivery Devices

System uses wireless data net to provide package status information more quickly

By Mary E. Thyfault

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nited Parcel Service of America Inc. is spending $100 million to upgrade the devices its drivers use to send and receive information about package pickups.

The shipping company said last week it's rolling out a new generation of its Delivery Information Acquisition Devices that includes a built-in radio, which sends and receives data whenever a package changes hands or status over American Mobile Satellite Corp.'s Ardis wireless packet-data network.

UPS gets 110,000 phone inquiries a day, and its Web site receives 800,000 hits a day from customers trying to track packages. UPS says the new devices will enable drivers to receive urgent pick-up requests 30 minutes faster than they could with the old system. "This helps them meet the demands of customers who want more information and higher-quality service," says Roberta Wiggens, an analyst with the Yankee Group.

The system was developed with Motorola and provides the most benefit on routes that require drivers to spend more time on their feet than in their vehicles. Until now, drivers had to return to their trucks and use a cellular docking station to transmit and receive data. That cellular docking station still exists as a backup.

UPS says the digital Ardis network provides good in-building penetration and sends data at 19.2 Kbps, with a typical message taking only one-third of a second to transmit rather than the 10 seconds it used to take. Information travels through Ardis to a land-line network to UPS data centers in Mahwah, N.J., and Atlanta, where it's available to call centers, on the Web, and to callers using UPS's voice-recognition system.

UPS is rolling out the new system in 13 markets, including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The company plans to add about one market each week and eventually deploy 50,000 devices.