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FAQ for the Sonim XP3 Sentinel

What is the Sonim XP3 Sentinel?

XP3 Sentinel is an ultra-rugged mobile phone from Sonim which is especially designed to be part of a safety monitoring solution for Lone Workers. This phone has a dedicated red button on the side which the user presses to raise the alarm, if they are in trouble, and the phone sends the user's current GPS position using SMS or mobile data to a monitoring centre. The phone may place an automatic call to the monitoring centre and continue to track the worker's position until the emergency is resolved. The monitoring centre can dispatch help to the user's exact location.

What are some examples of Lone Workers and who is this phone for?

Lone Workers are anyone who is required as part of their job to work alone, away from other workers. Sonim and its partners are offering a complete safety solution for Lone Workers in rugged, outdoor and exposed environments, typically those in hard-hat environments or those who may be threatened in their work by members of the public, or at risk of physical attack or kidnap. Some examples are:

Installation, equipment maintenance and inspection workers for water, electricity and gas utilities
Government environmental inspection agents
Street cleaning and road maintenance crews in towns and cities, working in the rough neighbourhoods or in the early morning or late evening
Construction workers and roofers who may be separated even for short period from their co-workers, who are at risk of accidents
Security guards, doing their rounds protecting a building or factory, inside and out or collecting and delivering cash from banks and retail establishments in armoured vehicles
Forestry workers, at risk of injury
Drivers of trucks and vans in the logistics, delivery and field service sectors
Soldiers, military contractors and journalists in war-zones
Ski patrols, mountain rescue groups and park rangers
Workers in heavy manufacturing and extractive industries especially on outdoor sites
Installation and maintenance technicians working on telecom towers, cellular base stations or laying cable or optical fibers.
Chemical and oil and gas industry workers, whether at drilling, refining, processing, storage or pipeline sites

What kinds of risks does this solution address?

XP3 Sentinel, in conjunction with the services of compatible monitoring centres, allows the user to press the red button to request assistance if injured or attacked, or if in the presence of another individual who needs assistance. The man-down sensor, a feature of the phone based on an internal 3-axis accelerometer that measures G-forces, can be set up by the monitoring centre to detect lack of movement, excessive tilt for a defined duration, excessive impact and free-fall. For certain types of workers, this monitoring may be activated either at certain times of the day, or alternatively at the user's request and can automatically raise the alarm if an adverse event is detected. This can cover more serious injuries, crashes in a vehicle or dangerous falls where the worker becomes incapacitated and cannot press the red button.

What are employers obligations to Lone Workers?

In several countries, employers have a duty of care to make sure such workers are safe, which in practice means that they have to have safety policies for lone workers in place, including notifying the employer of the start and end of active shifts, and a pro-active system to respond to emergencies. These typically fall under Health and Safety or Occupational Health regulations. Penalties for non-compliance, or injuries or deaths sustained in the absence of such systems vary by country.

How does the solution address UK Duty of Care requirements of employers?

The UK has the most stringent employer requirements in the world. Employers are required to pro-actively maintain the safety of Lone Workers, under Duty of Care provisions. In April 2008, the Corporate Manslaughter Act made it a criminal offence for an employer organization to have failed to provide the appropriate Duty of Care, if this results in the death of a worker.

No longer is it necessary to prove that an individual employer staff member was negligent for penalties to be applied. In the event of a death of a lone worker, the burden of proof is now on the employer to demonstrate they had an appropriate pro-active safety system in place. At the time of writing, the first test case, concerning the death of a young geologist examining soil samples at the bottom of a deep trench at a building site which collapsed on top of him, is making its way through the courts in England. Under the Act, if the employer cannot prove that they had a safety system in place for this worker, a senior management member of the company will receive a mandatory jail sentence, in addition to a large fine for the company.

The Sonim XP3 Sentinel, used with Lone Worker Monitoring services from either Trackaphone or Peoplesafe will fully meet and exceed the requirements under UK Duty of Care provisions, and furthermore meet the requirements of British Standard BS8484, issued in late 2009, for Lone Worker Devices and Monitoring Stations, developed in close consultation with the Association of Chief Police Officers.

What is the role of the partners announced today?

Sonim's Lone Worker Monitoring partners all provide server systems for communicating with the XP3 Sentinel over the cellular data and SMS networks. These systems send and receive configuration, status monitoring, position and alarm messages to and from the XP3 Sentinel, and provide to emergency response call centers the capabilities they need to monitor workers and respond to emergencies, knowing the users location. Some of these partners also offer emergency call centers themselves, others supply their software on a hosted or deployed server basis to other emergency call centers.

Several of them have partnership relationships with major mobile operators who resell these monitoring services through their business, enterprise and government sales organizations. Some operate only in one country, others operate internationally. Each of these partners has provided expertise to Sonim in the development process of the XP3 Sentinel based on their real world field experience, and has used the extensive customization and configuration capabilities of the XP3 Sentinel to tailor the exact user functionality closely to their monitoring service. Please see the partners section of www.sonimloneworker.com for specific information.

What do the monitoring centres do that calling 999, 112 or 911 would not accomplish?

The monitoring centres have a richer communication to the user and the device than a national government emergency service has. Not only is a voice call placed to the call centre, but, depending on the configuration of the service and XP3 Sentinel device, the following may also be available to the monitoring centre: current position and history of the users recent movements, nature of the alarm (red button or man-down with specific event type), name and organization of the user, previously automatically recorded messages from the user if they had felt the need to provide information before entering a higher risk situation.

Calling the standard emergency number from a standard mobile phone often means that only the cellular location, based on the position of cellular base stations is known. This is approximate and may indicate a wide area 500m or more across. The XP3 Sentinel will send a precise GPS position, typically accurate to within 10m that may be supplemented with cellular location as well if so configured by the monitoring centre. Commercial emergency response centres have trained staff who understand the nature of the employment of the monitored user and can make a more complete assessment of the risk and needed response. They will then in turn dispatch either a response team from within that employer organization or directly call the appropriate government emergency service, whether police, ambulance, fire department, coast guard, mountain rescue etc. This saves time in the response.

These response centres know how to quickly gather from the user the key information needed by government response agencies and communicate it directly. They filter out false alarms and conform to best practices, such as those in British Standard BS8484, or in German standard DIN 0825-11 and as a result are prioritized and taken seriously by government agencies. In some cases, such as GEOS Alliance, a global emergency response can be dispatched within 15 minutes, up to and including hostage rescue from a war zone!

How do I buy this solution and what does it cost?

The solution is available by contacting Sonim's Lone Worker monitoring partners, information is provided at www.sonimloneworker.com These partners offer a monitoring service as a monthly fee, and various options and prices exist. In some cases they will directly supply the Sonim XP3 Sentinel, in other cases, the phones are ordered from the dealer, distributor or network operator that they will nominate. The service is usually configured over-the-air when the user receives the phone, though there are other methods too, and each monitoring partner will provide simple instructions to the user on how to initiate this. The XP3 Sentinel may variously be made available with a network contract, or unlocked - with monitoring service and data plan included or separately priced - so prospective customers must contact our monitoring partners for more information.

Is the phone available on a standalone basis?

No. In the absence of the companion monitoring service and the specific configuration, there is no Lone Worker capability in the phone. Sonim will direct all end customer organization sales enquiries to one of our Lone Worker monitoring partners in the first instance.

What's different in Sonim's approach vs. other lone worker products?

Sonim has made the world's most sophisticated Lone Worker monitoring product an integral part of the world's most rugged, fully submersible mobile phone. No separate device is needed, and the phone will survive environments that its user would not. The degree of customization available to our monitoring service partners in their configuration of the device is unprecedented, and allows them to fully express the unique capabilities of their service in a simple-to-use way for the user. All of the sophistication is hidden from the user, who simply interacts with the phone using the red, amber and green keys and four simple status icons that appear on the home screen. The red alarm key works even if the phone keypad is locked and is operable even with work gloves on. There are no phone menus to navigate or applications icons to find. The expertise our multiple partners brought to us throughout the development process has resulted in the most rugged, reliable and flexible Lone Worker solution available anywhere.

What kind of GPS performance should I expect? Does it work indoors, on in a car, van or truck?

The XP3 Sentinel has good GPS performance in good GPS signal strength environments - typically outdoors with a clear view of the overhead sky. However GPS is not magic, but physics! Depending on the position of the (constantly moving) GPS satellites, good fixes are sometimes obtained indoors, near windows, however GPS signal is often lost indoors. The satellite icon on the phone screen is colour coded green, yellow or red to indicate the GPS signal strength. If green, the position is accurate to 10-30 metres. If yellow, the position will have lower accuracy - typically within 30-200 meters. Your lone worker monitoring provider may also be requesting cellular location information as a backup, and some providers can use both together to improve accuracy in certain low GPS signal environments. GPS fix times range from 12 seconds to several minutes depending on GPS signal strength. In a vehicle, mount the device on the upper dashboard or in the windscreen for good GPS performance. Unlike dedicated vehicle navigation systems, there is no roof mounted GPS antenna.

How rugged is the phone?

Extremely rugged! We can't say unbreakable, but virtually any real-life usage in any weather or extreme work environment short of deliberate, malicious abuse wont' affect the operation of the XP3 Sentinel. Even MILSPEC 810G and IP-67 don't fully capture the ruggedness of our products, so please see Sonim's own Rugged Performance Standards (RPS)

Click here to find out more about Sonim's RPS
No monitoring company was announced in my market? How can I get Lone Worker service?

In addition to our launch markets (UK, Ireland, Germany, Benelux, USA and Canada) Sonim is working with additional Lone Worker monitoring partners in France, Canada and Australia/New Zealand, whose services should be available within a couple of months. If you would like this solution in your country please contact your local Sonim representative.

Click here to find your local Sonim representative

I am a Lone Worker monitoring company, how do I work with Sonim?

Please contact us through our main website or our local country or regional organization. We have a full suite of developer documentation and technical support.