While there are number of competitive standards and proprietary technologies that enable wireless communications between different devices in the Telematics and M2M arenas, Airbiquity’s® patented aqLink® technology offers the most attractive combination of cost and coverage. By utilizing the voice channel of any cellular network, aqLink® can provide a reliable and highly available means of transporting valuable customer data to its peers or a call center. The following are fundamental elements that have to be taken into account when selecting a data transmission technology in the Telematics or M2M markets: • Coverage and Availability - Voice has been and remains to be the most valuable application offered by wire-line and wireless carriers, today and in the future. The cellular voice channel is the most reliable and available means of communication and has the broadest worldwide coverage. Since aqLink® uses the voice channel of any analog or digital cellular networks for transmission of customers’ valuable data, it can ensure the delivery of critical data virtually anywhere that there is a voice channel. • Cost - The cellular carriers around the world have been competing very aggressively in offering their customers attractive voice pricing plans. With the availability of different voice pricing plans, the customer understands the benefits of each plan, and can select a plan that best suits his/her usage and application. Similar to widely deployed fax protocols, aqLink® can be treated as another voice-band application, thus eliminating the requirement for additional costly service plans for data transmission. In addition, since aqLink® can operate seamlessly and transparently on any cellular network, the customer no longer needs to be tied to a specific carrier. • Data Rate - aqLink® is best suited for applications that require the transport of real-time data with widest coverage and highest availability. Critical data such as automatic crash notification, vital medical statistics, credit card transactions and emergency services which requires a narrowband transmission facility can benefit from aqLink® reliability and availability. • Scalability - Scalability is one of the fundamental challenges in deploying new services and technologies. Wireless carriers are very familiar with voice traffic engineering and have mastered the art of scaling their digital network to meet the customer demands and provide an acceptable grade of service. Due to the immaturity of 2.5G and 3G data networks, carriers will certainly face many traffic engineering challenges in scaling their respective data networks. By using the voice channel as a means of transportation, applications that use aqLink® can benefit from continuous capacity and coverage improvements of the cellular network. • Technology Longevity - With the advent of digital voice transmission in the 90’s, wireless carriers have been aggressively upgrading their networks to take advantage of capacity and efficiency gains that digital network bring. Since the FCC Part-22 ruling in 2002 which establishes 5 year sunset on analog services in North America, wireless carriers have embraced this ruling and are aggressively working to phase out analog services in order to reclaim that spectrum for the more efficient digital services. The sunset on analog services will present major product/system lifespan issues for technologies that depend on analog cellular services (Control Channel Signaling, Bell103). Airbiquity is the first and only company that has enabled transmission of data through the voice channel of any digital cellular network, allowing M2M applications to benefit from this technology for many years to come.