>>At least one taxicab company in my little town has this - they know exactly where each of their cars is at any time. And they're operating on a very thin margin (the competition is severe, there's at least six companies like that in the city of no more than 70K people; the average distance is about 4km and the fare is about 1,50€). They use it mainly to know which car is the nearest, to cut down on driving empty.
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>>And I seriously doubt that they have their own GPS capable network. They have the regular radio and I think that radio simply carries the GPS coordinates from the unit in the car - i.e. the cars are broadcasting their position. Involving any mobile telephony service in that would not be possible at these prices.
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>It's a number one thing to watch employees. Truckers are reported now to urinate into a bottle because the boss will complain if they do a stop for that. We had ugly car accidents because of that.

A friend of mine died of similar policies in 1976. He was hitchhiking home from college, and was standing perhaps 10m away from the crossing with the main road. And then got mowed by a bus which was taking turkish gastarbeiter home. The investigation showed that the bus had only one driver, who was about ten hours at the wheel already.

IOW no matter what the technology, there'll always be employers who will always cut corners on safety to make an extra bit of profit.

>I do not know how cell pohne rates with internet (SMS, for that) flat are at your place, but this is not a thing here. A prepaid rate is nothing, and it's not much data. And almost everybody owns one.

I went for anonymous prepaid (bought the SIM at a kiosk) and tracking cost is tricky enough that I haven't even bothered. Daughter uses the same arrangement, and she says the rates are just bad. One SMS is not too expensive, perhaps below 0,10€, and I don't know whether this taxi operator uses it to send coordinates to main office. My guess is that they got something rigged to connect the car's GPS with the radio and send some of its info in short bursts to the office. I know this because the numbers in my street are a bit weird, and the cabs frequently start looking the other end of the street first. Not these guys, once they accept the ride, they get their GPS's target set to the customer's location. Conversely, when they take a ride, they type in the target location in the GPS and the office immediately knows where they're going. The last guy I talked with says it was worth it in gas saving alone, not to mention the shorter response times - they usually arrive within three to five minutes.