Onstar

[BUICK11]

Received a letter from Onstar today advising they will be turning service off to our 1999 SLS and 2001 DTS. Between January 1st and February 18th 2008.

End of the line has arrived.

Frank

[Cadillac Jim]

My phone service, Cingular (since bought by AT&T) was even more anxious to get me off the TDMA net. A couple of months ago I got a Garmin 360 (with Bluetooth) and "upgraded" my cell phone to a Treo 750. Watch my blog in the next few days for a full report with pictures. It's not OnStar but it's what I can get, and it isn't bad.

[BUICK11]

Verizon who we used on the 1999 SLS advised a few months ago they will terminate service in February. We got a Garmin 340 and use out A T& T family plan for phone service.

Only thing I will miss on Onstar is the Airbag deployment notification for the safety of the family.

Frank

[Cadillac Jim]

The driving consideration for me when I bought my car was the theft feature -- the car will call OnStar and disable the phone if the theft system is tripped. If it's broken glass or the trunk is popped, it doesn't activate the horn beeping. The car then passes its location to OnStar until it's recovered. This seems to be to be better than LoJack because it's activated by the car and cell phone coverage is far better than LoJack coverage -- see the coverage maps on your cell carrier's web site and on the LoJack web site and compare them.

I didn't even want a phone, but of course OnStar wasn't available without a phone in the Generation I systems, and 1997 was the first or second year for OnStar. The emergency button and the air bag deployment systems are major advantages that you can't get any other way, of course. The ways that I have used OnStar for the last ten years are:

• I regularly used OnStar for directions to an address or to a destination that I would describe by name or whatever. Sometimes I would just ask where I could get something and they would look it up for me.
• I used the phone a lot, particularly when going to or from work, to do my phone work while I was on the road. It's also useful in keeping in touch with the wife while out and about picking up things. And, when traveling, you can stay in touch with those you are visiting so they know when you are arriving, etc.
• During that ten years, I talked with Cadillac a number of times, regarding the oil burning, asking some questions about some strange messages I got when my battery cable was acting up, how to get analog phone service when I moved form the West Coast to the East Coast (call 611 and see who answers!) and the future of OnStar.
• Once, when the car was new, I lost it in a vast starfish-type parking lot -- I was two rays off the one where I parked the car. OnStar turned on the find-the-car mode for me.

The Garmin is better at directions to an address, and the destination selection is really excellent, so that part is better than OnStar overall, although you don't have somebody with a brain and a pulse who can ask someone else if they get stumped. Since this is 90% or more of what I used OnStar for, this is an improvement.

The Garmin that I bought has bluetooth, and I "upgraded" my car phone to a GSM phone that I have on my belt, so I can still make and receive hands-free phone calls from the car -- and I have the same phone number that the car phone had for seven years. I don't miss the stereo system integration because I don't mind reaching over and turning down the radio, or using the steering wheel toggles to turn down the radio volume to use the phone. Analog phone coverage started getting bad about five years ago, and for the last couple of years it has been so bad that I quit giving out the phone number because I couldn't count on a call getting through, or the quality of the connection if it did. My new phone is TDMA2000 (international multiband GSM) so the connection is nearly always good while in the car, even with the phone on my belt. So, phone service is much improved, and I give out the number again, this time as the preferred number to reach me anytime, not just my car phone.

I will miss the person with a brain and a pulse at the push of a button, and the Cadillac person for the asking who knows that they are talking with an intelligent, happy Cadillac owner when they take the call. I would Keep OnStar forever if I could. But, I can't.

[TDK]

Jim, et all,

One would think that some enterprising person or group would see the possiblity of parlaying the all the exisitng (albiet-obselete) GM OnStar hardware interface with new consumer technology- to make a much better product than ever possible.

This almost seems like a Tech-School class project to build a smart-interface from OnStar to cellphone's Bluetooth and start cashing the checks (or the PayPal payments).

Sigh,,, if only I were younger and needed mo-money...

[Cadillac Jim]

Story in USA Today on Friday says that the end of the analog telephone network and its impact on OnStar and others. Apparently there are about 250 million cell phones in the USA, about two million of which are analog phones. About 500,000 OnStar customers will be terminated on December 31. Link:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/2007...g-network_N.htm

Warning: slow JavaScript on page.

[weephee]

The parts finally arrived to upgrade my 03 Seville from Analog to digital. It took the service rep no more than half an hours to do the conversion. The hardest part was removing the antenna, both inside and outside of the back window. The dealer told me they would send out a bill when they got their bill from onstar. My understanding all along was that I would pay for a full years subscription plus $15. When I finally got the bill there was an additional $100 activation charge bringing the total to $460.56 incl taxes. Contacted onstar and was advised that anyone who activated onstar after February 2007 would have to pay the additional $100. Even though I had onstar prior to that in a different vehicle, I was still obliged to pay the additional fee. Onstar said it was up to the dealer to let me know that. Either a deliberate rip off or really bad communications between onstar, the dealer and the customer. A further public relations nightmare for onstar.

[Cadillac Jim]

Jim, et all,

One would think that some enterprising person or group would see the possiblity of parlaying the all the exisitng (albiet-obselete) GM OnStar hardware interface with new consumer technology- to make a much better product than ever possible.

This almost seems like a Tech-School class project to build a smart-interface from OnStar to cellphone's Bluetooth and start cashing the checks (or the PayPal payments).

Sigh,,, if only I were younger and needed mo-money...

I have recently taught digital communications and digital telecommunications, and I agree. The GM car phone used in my model year, 1997, is very different from a hand-held unit, but a TDMA2000 (international frequency-agile GSM like a Smartphone) audio/RF unit with modem capability would solve the problem of interfacing the rest of it to the cellular network. The simplest thing to do would be to combine the TDMA2000 chip with the rest of the chip in a new module and plug it into the existing system. Since the phone is integrated into the stereo and has its own module on the network, the IRC, support for Class 2 communications and an interconnect specification for the IRC Class 2 data line is needed, you need a specification for the OnStar modem communications, and you need an interconnect specification for the interface to the stereo. The FSM gives enough information for the power connectors, and the interface to the stereo is simple enough to work out without outside help, but without the Class 2 data definition spec for the IRC you can't guarantee trouble-free operation because you can't complete a Turing table for outputs as a function of inputs and IRC status, and having do-nothings for things you don't know about is unsatisfactory for units you would sell on the open market for retrofitting people's cars. Since OnStar is integrated with the RFA and does things like unlock the car, you can be in trouble if that isn't handled properly, and the sensitivity about how this is done is probably one of the reasons that GM is reluctant to give this information to aftermarket suppliers.

Other possibilities may present themselves if you could get the interconnect specification document for the IRC from GM. For example, if you are on the network, you should be able to interrogate the other modules and get the codes and provide them to the OnStar interface so that the operator can read out your vehicle status, something that is available only to Gen 4 systems and later. Differences in the Class 2 and stereo interconnect for 1997 through 2002 model years should be easily handled by software flags that are controlled by jumpers or a thumbwheel on the module; they only have four or five generations of OnStar equipment. If so, offering equipment that would retrofit all OnStar-ready models is not significantly more expensive than offering it to any one model year.

What I don't understand (or agree with) is why they put the cutoff at the 2003 model year. By saying that a car over four years old isn't supported any more (until recently GM offered retrofit OnStar systems, regardless of whether OnStar was sold on the vehicle, for OnStar-ready vehicles as old as the 1997 model year) and offering a free year of OnStar for a new (or 2003 or newer used) car, GM gives the appearance of "offer them what we want to sell, not what they want to buy" thinking. This is very inflammatory to a significant part of the Cadillac customer base and can't be construed as good business.

I think the problem, from the GM point of view, is that OnStar as a cost center isn't a moneymaker, but it is a discriminator between GM and other manufacturers -- and is thus part of the equation in selling new cars. To make a case to the stockholders, which must be done every 90 days, you have to present a business plan that justifies investment versus return. I thing that this could be done by offering OnStar retrofits to every GM vehicle ever made that has OBD II, but the business model of OnStar doesn't make an easy case for moneymaking this way with the existing rate system. Since this impacts the used car marketplace and could decrease new car sales in some people's minds, its a really hard sell, and is probably part of why they cut off 500,000 subscribers on December 31, although they could have easily waited until February 18. This likely postpones a major investment in the answering centers for a year, for example.