Mobile Internet

Don't ignore the power of mobile-location services

Our Correspondent

NEW DELHI -- Travelers are often faced with the problem of locating places of importance in a new city they land in. In fact, persons frequently travelling to a particular city are also short of information on the location of the various utilities like restaurants, cinema halls, gas stations, places of tourist interests, etc.

What if a service is made available on your cell phone to guide you through the travails of locating a place of your interest? Such a service would inform you of things such as a restaurant serving your favorite food and the cinema hall screening the movie you always wanted to watch but never had time to do so in your home town. These are just some of the basic requirements, but the list includes much more pertinent items. This is the scenario where mobile-based location services, better known as mobile-location services (MLS) come in to play.

Market research shows that location-enabled services are believed to have the potential to drive revenue of more than $13 billion by 2005. Revenue from these services will help carriers offset the cost of location-enabling their networks, and also succeed in driving data usage in a time of falling revenues for wireless voice services.

The service is based on the concept of identifying the location of a mobile user, and accordingly pushing the information using Internet for that particular location. Mobile Internet forms an integral part of these location-based services. Currently, if an Airtel user from New Delhi is roaming in Mumbai circle and requests for movie listings by sending an SMS to the service provider, he will receive the listing of all the movies being screened in New Delhi, and not in Mumbai, though he needs the movie listings for Mumbai.

Pushing information to roaming subscribers
The situation changes altogether with the introduction of Cellnext's RoamME service. It identifies the current network of a roaming subscriber and pushes the information accordingly. Once the cellular operator implements RoamME, a roaming subscriber, say from Hutch, with his home circle being New Delhi, will receive the information about the circle he is roaming in. For instance, if he requests for discotheques in Mumbai, he will receive a list that will include Rhinos, Athena, etc., and not the one that includes MKOP, Annabelles and Oasis.

Cellnext's RoamME offers cellular operators an opportunity to increase their revenues by providing value-added services for both the in-roamers and the out-roamers. The service goes a step further and offers a welcome message to the roaming subscriber when the subscriber moves from one circle to another.

However, one of the best ways to personalize information services is to enable them to be location based. An example would be someone using his WAP-based mobile phone to search for a restaurant. The LBS application would interact with other location technology components to determine the user's location and provide a list of restaurants within a certain proximity to the mobile user. GSM and GPRS enabled mobile telephony networks in consonance with global positioning services are bringing the allurement of another revenue stream in the form of MLS for cellular operators.

Geographic data key aspect
Geographic data is another important aspect of any location system. Geographic information systems (GIS) provide the tools for provisioning and administering base map data such as man-made structures like streets and buildings, and terrain such as mountains and rivers. GIS is used to manage point-of-interest data such as location of gas stations, restaurants, nightclubs, etc. Finally, GIS information also includes information about the radio frequency characteristics of the mobile network. This allows the system to determine the serving cell site of a user.

The scope and potential of LBS increases by leaps once GPS combines with mobile telephony technologies such as GSM and GPRS. The service will be of great benefit for law enforcement agencies in tracking the location of users. It also comes in very handy in situations such as car and mobile phone thefts. The system tracks the location of the user and sends the information to the concerned authority. Apart from the needs of law agencies, marketers can benefit a lot from these services by pushing information of interest to users at various locations. For instance, a cell phone user visiting Bangalore is interested in shopping and looking around for some good bargains. In that case, information about the stores offering discounts can be pushed to his cell phone. The possibilities are numerous and yet to be explored fully.

Over a period of time, location-based services will prove to be a strategic value addition in the operators' battle against falling ARPUs. The trend is very encouraging worldwide. Asia leads the way in GPS-based LBS with Korea launching a GPS-enabled network while Japan's KDDI offers its subscribers LBS for locating McDonald's outlets. It should not be too long when Indians will be finding their way to the nearest Barista using their cell phones.