TELUS helps Beck Taxi keep Toronto moving with reliable IoT connectivity

Customer stories · Oct 13, 2023

Learn how Canada’s largest taxi company uses IoT-powered dispatch and payment capabilities to support thousands of drivers and riders.

Leveraging IoT connectivity to transport 10 million Torontonians each year

For more than 50 years, Beck Taxi has been providing reliable, friendly rides to people throughout Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area. The family run company has become the largest taxi business in the country.

A key component of Beck’s success has been the way they empower their drivers with technology to support quick payment transactions. As Operations Manager, Kristine Hubbard often says, "the company works for its drivers, not the other way around." Beck’s drivers operate as independent contractors, running their own businesses supported by the company’s world-class trainers, dispatchers, call-takers and cutting-edge technologies.

Another key to Beck’s industry dominance has been the company’s innovative use of digital solutions to continually improve the driver and rider experience. Beck was the first taxi company in Toronto, for example, to offer

an app allowing riders to schedule pickups.

With demand increasing, and the company’s dispatchers handling tens of thousands of requests each day, the company needed to ensure its payment systems worked quickly and reliably. Losing connectivity could create frustrating experiences for both drivers and riders. The company leveraged IoT-powered tablets to support quick and seamless transactions so riders could pay and be on their way.

The challenge

Given how essential digital payment capabilities were to Beck’s growing operations, they needed a dependable partner that could provide the uptime to support their drivers’ transactions 24/7/365, especially during the most demanding times.

Hubbard explains that the ongoing risk of these systems going down posed two significant problems: the company would have more difficulty supporting driver payments, and people across the city who needed rides — sometimes urgently — might not be able to receive them in a timely manner due to connectivity downtime.

“Taxis can perform critical functions for a society — from getting someone to a hospital, to bringing home a lost child on a school trip. For the thousands of drivers operating our vehicles, we needed a trusted IoT and network partner.”

- Kristine Hubbard, Operations Manager, Beck Taxi

The solution

After thoroughly researching the industry, Beck chose

TELUS Control Centre

, which combines network connectivity via Cisco Jasper with TELUS SIMs, to power the IoT tablets in over 3,000 vehicles. As Hubbard points out, "The solution provides several important benefits for Beck’s drivers and riders."

With TELUS’ track record as a leader in network connectivity for even the largest and most geographically distributed organizations, Beck can continue to confidentially expand its operations. The taxi company is able to seamlessly support its drivers and deliver an outstanding digital experience to riders no matter how large the company grows.

Key results

Scaled up to 3,000 IoT-enabled devices for the company's fleet of taxis
Supporting 1.2 million IoT-enabled point-of-sale payments each year across Toronto
Providing reliable operations to drivers and transportation for riders even during the highest-demand times

“The TELUS IoT-powered devices help us protect our drivers," says Hubbard. "Drivers can quickly and seamlessly accept a credit card transaction with the tablet from where they’re located. That helps our drivers get paid, avoid negative reviews, and creates a safer environment for them as they can avoid technical issues, which is our top priority.”

Why TELUS Business was the clear choice

The key factors driving Beck’s decision were TELUS’ network dependability, reputation as a helpful and accessible technology partner, and the ability to easily scale up, or down, based on the number of devices they need on the road at any given time.