All new Toyota vehicles sold in South Africa — including passenger cars and minibus taxes — will be fitted with a device that provides telematics and a Wi-Fi hotspot to which up to 15 users will be able to connect.

The device, developed by Altron subsidiary Netstar, contains an e-Sim from Vodacom, which connects to two APNs, or mobile access points, one a prepaid APN for Internet access and the other a post-paid APN for telemetry and other services.

Coupled with the MyToyota smartphone app, the device will allow drivers and passengers to connect to Wi-Fi, check the car’s battery health, get real-time roadside assistance, manage vehicle services, monitor the vehicle’s location using GPS, make service books and provide a digital logbook. Companies will be able to use them to monitor their fleet. The solution is fully compliant with the Protection of Personal Information Act.

The device will be standard in all new Toyota vehicles sold in South Africa from 1 September. Toyota and Netstar have partnered with Vodacom on the e-Sim technology, with consumers to get 15GB of “free” data on the purchase of a new vehicle. Once this once-off allocation is depleted, they will be able to top it up with additional data in the MyToyota app or using electronic banking. The post-paid telemetry service is unaffected, even if the prepaid data is fully used up — it will continue to offer telemetry and other data services as it uses a separate APN.  — (c) 2019 NewsCentral Media

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