Guam is located in the western Pacific and is one of five U.S. territories. Guam is divided into 19 municipalities called “villages” and has over 160,000 residents. As you can imagine, the 
technological infrastructure of the island is somewhat immature. In an effort to better organize and modernize waste gathering and processing, the government of Guam selected Alpine to partner with GBB (Gershman, Brickner & Bratton) to implement comprehensive solutions, both in the office and with the routes.
The challenges facing Alpine stemmed from two sources. First, the “village” culture of Guam presented a challenge. Alpine was charged to implement solutions whereby Guam could track and charge customers for their use of trash containers. Not only was it difficult to track housing without formal streets, villages would tend to move and/or share the containers. Guam initially sought to implement its own substandard tracking solution without success. Second, the technological infrastructure of Guam made it difficult for Alpine to implement a comprehensive solution. Limited internet access and limited financial resources to build out a server environment conducive to the successful use of RAMS-Pro software became the next hurdle.
“…not only was it difficult to track housing without formal streets, villages would tend to move and/or share containers.”
Alpine sent two teams out to Guam to expedite the implementation of solutions. The On-Route experts developed a PDA interface with remote and RFID capabilities. Once the containers were “tagged”, the drivers could then determine real-time which container went with which customer. The RAMS-Pro team then provided Guam with a hosted office solution (AlpineLive) so they would not have to build out and support a sophisticated server infrastructure.
Guam can now provide waste management services to its customers, improve the efficiency of the drivers, and charge its customers to offset the escalating landfill fees. Success in the Pacific!