“They have been prepping


us for this transition for a few years now,” Shahan stated. “For the past few years as we order new buses, our provider has been giving us the 4G unit as soon as it becomes available, so some of our fleet is already there. All we must do is by the end of the year transition the remainder of the fleet to the latest and greatest, which is the 4G unit. We’ve already put that in motion, and we’ll be done well before they sunset it on Dec. 31.” Tim Shannon, transportation


director for the Twin Rivers Unified School District in Cal- ifornia has upgraded 40 buses to 4G with 26 left to go. “4G typically works for what we’re doing now because we’re not really stretching the limits of its capabilities,” Shannon said. “But as technology gets better and as hardware catches up with the 5G technology, 4G is going to run slower. That’s just the nature of the beast.”


Perfect Storm Zonar spokesperson Ben


Hohmann said when the major carriers announced the 3G sunset dates in 2019, it wasn’t major news to the company because keeping clients up to date is business as usual. “When they went from 2G


and we upgraded our custom- ers to 3G, there was a certain amount of legwork as far as notifying them,” Hohmann said. “But when COVID hit, suddenly there were fewer buses on the road and there was nobody in the shops to install replacement equipment, and we couldn’t send anybody out to install it. That caused a huge delay in upgrades.”


Hohmann added that by the


end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, public and commer- cial transportation then had problems getting the com- puter chips needed for their vehicles. “The supply chain issue compounded with the sunset dates made it a major challenge,” Hohmann recalled. “We’ve been in this business a long time and we have 200,000 customers. That made it a little bigger undertaking for us. It should have happened much easier, but you had the perfect storm of COVID, the supply chain issue, and the impend- ing deadline, which made it much more difficult.” Hohmann said supply chain


constraints delayed the deliv- ery of the microchip needed for Zonar’s traditional 4G telematics box. To compensate, company engineers developed the 4G-C, an adapter that con- nects to the 3G equipment. “Our engineers developed an ad hoc solution that turned out to be a robust technology to get every customer upgraded, even though we’re still kind of stuck in the supply chain dis- ruption,” Hohmann explained. “It’s easy to install and custom- ers can do it themselves very simply, and it gives them ac- cess to 4G. It’s a robust solution they can use going forward. They don’t have to worry about another switch until there is a 4G sunset, but that will be many years in the future.” Hohman said it helped that


AT&T didn’t simply shut down 3G devices in February. “The turnoff has gone gradually, so that bought us additional time to upgrade our customers. Nearly all have been migrated over,” he said, adding that less


51% of operations have upgraded


communications technology to run on 4G or 5G.


(Out of 116 responses to a recent magazine survey.)


Of the responses who haven’t upgraded communications, 12% are having complications trying to upgrade. (Out of 51 responses.)


14%


of transportation directors/ supervisors stated that their software programs are currently not working due to the need to upgrade. 25% are unsure.


36%


of transportation directors/ supervisors say that Wi-Fi equipped school buses are


still important to their school district.


(Out of 114 responses.)


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