Digicell is a vehicle tracking and management company founded in 2007 that serves the whole of South Africa and some regions of Botswana and Zimbabwe. The company, which is situated in Midrand in the heart of South Africa, provides vehicle management services to over 1,000 small business owners throughout the whole of South Africa. Early in 2008 Digicell started exporting to other countries including Spain, United States and Australia.
Contents
Technical
The company combined their own GPS and GPRS devices. The first twenty were built by hand and back then they used IWOW for the GPRS module and Navman for GPS triangulation. Currently Digicell's units are made from the cinterion modules for GPRS connectivity and a Ublox module for GPS information. The unit has been resized to fit in a smaller package as well and is now the size of a credit card but 2 cm thick. The box of the unit is a full aluminium case, making the unit very strong and creating a Faraday shield around the unit. Digicell is one of the first to make a device for prepaid cellphone numbers so that the client does not have to be signed into a 24-month cellphone contract.
History
Digicell, first established June 2007 in South Africa, grew extensively within eight months. In the two years since the initial launch, Digicell’s South African customer base has grown to more than 2000 users (January 2009) because of the versatility of the product. At first Digicell didn’t brand their own product and actually sold it to be rebranded for other already established companies to have a more reliable product, competing with the likes of Telit and Falcon's Step3. Digicell is 100% owned by entrepreneur Rordon Cowley and is 100% designed, developed and produced in South Africa, making this a Proudly South African product.
Expansion
In October 2008 Digicell expanded into Spain with 2000 units per year for the following three years. With the South African currency competing with the euro at a very low rate, Digicell's pricing seems very low to European buyers. In November 2008 Digicell got a request to start a local server for Europe and is currently (March 2009) busy with the planning and installation of this server in Panama and Guyana; this will ultimately become the Digicell server for vehicles in Europe.