Uber owns the dispatch software the trade runs on

Most of this trade worries about Uber taking its passengers. The thing worth looking at is quieter and already finished: Uber does not only compete with operators, it sells some of them the system they dispatch on.

6 August 2020. Uber announces an agreement to acquire Autocab, a Cheadle company that, in Uber’s own words, “provides private hire and taxi operators with technology to run their business, including booking and dispatch software”, and connects them to work through its iGo marketplace.

29 March 2021. After a phase 1 investigation the Competition and Markets Authority clears the deal unconditionally, finding no substantial lessening of competition. The CMA’s own framing of the case is the part to read: Uber is active in the supply of taxi services, Autocab supplies booking and dispatch technology to local cab companies that compete with Uber.

14 April 2021. The purchase completes.

Why a cleared deal is still a problem for you

The CMA answered a competition question, not an operator’s question. A regulator can be entirely right that a market is not being harmed while an individual business is still carrying a risk it never chose.

That risk is not sabotage. Nobody expects a switch to be thrown. It is simpler and slower: the roadmap of the software you run on is set by a company whose own app is in the same postcodes as your drivers. Which features get built, which integrations open, which marketplace your spare capacity is offered into, and on what terms, are decisions made somewhere that does not lose anything if you shrink.

The part nobody prices

Dispatch is not a tool the way an accounts package is a tool. It holds the passenger records, the account customers, the pricing, the driver history and the job data. Changing it is not a procurement exercise, it is a migration, and everybody in this trade knows what a bad migration week costs in drivers.

That is exactly what makes the question worth asking now, while it is still a question rather than a bill.

What independence actually means

Not writing your own software. It means the system you dispatch on is supplied by somebody whose only business is dispatch, who does not run a competing app in your area, and who cannot take your account customers because it does not have any of its own.