AT&T to put RFID and GPS in schoolbuses

The San Antonio telco announced today the availability of "black box" type solutions for K-12 school busses, working toward a day when school vehicles can be tracked like aircraft.

The devices provide GPS-based mobile resource management (MRM) solutions, tracking school bus locations, monitoring their speed and providing on-board driving information to bus drivers.

In addition, the devices support RFID tagging, which tracks the presence of students equipped with Wi-Fi-based RFID tags which can be placed in ID badges, bracelets or keychain fobs.

This type of RFID tag is called "passive" because it does not require a battery, and it can only be read from a short distance away. It also provides a limited amount of data storage, and is therefore best suited for the simple tracking that would take place on or around the bus, and in school buildings.

According to the National Advisory Committee on Children and Terrorism's report, June 2003, 53 million young people attend more than 119,000 public and private schools where 6 million adults work as teachers and staff. On any given day, the report therefore states, more than one-fifth of the US population can be found in schools.

Security for this segment of the population has therefore become increasingly important, and some groups have expressed interest in technologies such as those AT&T provides.

Some, like Liberty, Missouri's 8,500 student school district, have opted for equipping their buses with security cameras. There is no report yet of where initial deployments of AT&T's MRM/RFID solutions will be.

However, AT&T recently signed an agreement with the state of Texas Governor's Division of Emergency Management (GDEM) to provide emergency evacuees with RFID bracelets, to best direct the evacuation process.