What is telematics?
· Kelvin Oyugi, Technology & Telematics Expert · 2 min read
Telematics is the combination of telecommunications and vehicle data: a device in the vehicle collects information about where it is and what it is doing, and sends it over a mobile network to somewhere you can read it.
The word joins "telecommunications" and "informatics", which is accurate but unhelpful. In practice telematics means a unit fitted to a vehicle that knows things — position, speed, ignition state, sometimes fuel level, sometimes what the driver is doing — and reports them to a platform you can open on a phone or a computer.
What separates telematics from a plain GPS tracker is what happens to the data after it arrives. A tracker answers "where is it". A telematics system answers questions you did not ask at the moment the event happened: which vehicles idled for an hour yesterday, which route was taken instead of the assigned one, when the tank level dropped while the engine was off.
That distinction matters commercially, because the cost of a fleet is rarely in the thing you can see. It is in fuel that leaves the tank unexplained, in vehicles that take longer routes than they need to, in a driver whose habits will eventually cost an engine, and in the hours spent phoning people to ask where they are.
Everything a telematics system reports depends on the vehicle being reachable. The unit needs a GPS fix to know where it is and a mobile network to say so, so reporting is subject to network and GPS availability. A system that stops reporting has not necessarily failed — it may be in a place with no coverage — which is exactly why a serious installation treats unexplained silence as an event rather than a gap.
Nebsam Digital Solutions (K) Ltd installs and supports telematics systems across Kenya, from branches in Nairobi, Mombasa and Nakuru.
Read more: Vehicle tracking