Orange launches SIM-based dog tracking system

3 December 2008 11:32 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Retrieva and Orange have announced the launch of a dog tracking system with the Retrieva Tracking and Anti-theft collar for dogs.

Offering instant tracking and an alert system linked directly to your mobile phone, the companies are hoping it will help reduce the number of dogs lost or stolen in the UK, which averaged 2,500 a week last year.

The Retrieva collar links to your mobile phone to show its position with no need for a computer.

To track the collar, and presumably the pooch, users have to open the bundled mapping application on their phone, and request the collar's location, which will then appear live on the map.

And - if a user's phone is GPS-enabled, they will also be able to plot their location in relation to that of the dog.

The cut-proof and waterproof collar has an Orange SIM embedded inside it and uses GPS and GSM to track the dog.

The collar works with the "ICyou", a portable smart base station which sits in the home and doubles as the recharging unit for the collar. The ICyou will also alert owners if the dog leaves the premises unexpectedly.

The system will soon be launched in the UK and costs £9.99 a month to operate, plus £250 for the package of one collar, the ICyou unit and the ViewRanger off-road phone mapping system.