WASHINGTON-With a little more than 18 months until the deadline for the implementation of enhanced 911 Phase II service, carriers are beginning to think about how they can make money from a government mandate that requires location technology.
They are not alone. Vendors, too, are sprouting up like daffodils in springtime.
At the recent CTIA Wireless 2000 conference, vendors and carriers alike were all abuzz about how location technologies can make all the ever-increasing wireless applications the dot-com world plans to provide more attractive.
While analysts believe Phase I E911 was more costly for the public safety answering points to deploy because carriers could already determine the cell site and call-back number from their networks, Phase II will be more expensive for carriers. For this reason, carriers are looking to recoup their costs by offering customers location-specific information as value-added features.
The top executive at Vodafone AirTouch plc spelled this out during the opening session at the show. “We know where our customers are … and knowing where they are, we want to make sure we deliver location-specific technology,” said Vodafone AirTouch Chief Executive Officer Chris Gent. “Location-specific content … will be very important to our future,” Gent added.
On the vendor side, the giant of computer software-Microsoft Corp.-also is looking at location applications as part of its wireless strategy, said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
But it wasn’t just Microsoft, the CTIA floor was awash with old and new companies urging carriers to select their location product or service.
These location solutions vary from network-based solutions to handset-based solutions using the global positioning system to service-bureau vendors.
Carriers must make a decision by June as to whether they will deploy a network-based or handset solution so the vendors were aggressively pushing their products. One attendee at a CTIA session featuring Thomas Sugrue, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, complained that her handset company, based in Europe, couldn’t comply with the rules that require wireless carriers to provide PSAPs with automatic location information accurate to 410 feet. She did not identify the company.
Sugrue said that at the time the Federal Communications Commission adopted the rules last fall, the handset-based location vendors assured him the rules were achievable.
There are pros and cons to each. For example, both handset-based solutions and some network-based solutions have difficulties inside buildings and urban canyons, and since a majority of wireless users are inside metropolitan areas, this could be a problem.
Service bureaus are being hocked as a way to avoid both of these problems.
U.S. Wireless Corp. of San Ramon, Calif., is developing such a model. U.S. Wireless is deploying a network of several radio cameras to produce radar images that can be matched with a location calibration. The solution is neither carrier nor technology specific. U.S. Wireless will sell its location services to carriers. Because the radio camera calibration method is sensitive to the landscape, U.S. Wireless will update the calibration once a year.
The service bureau model works for carriers who want to meet the 911 mandate without taking a lot of risks because U.S. Wireless is making all of the deployment investment, the company said.
“Carriers are concerned they can make the wrong decision. We future-proof their decision so they can move on,” said Dale Stone, U.S. Wireless’ new president and chief operating officer.
At the show, GTE Telecommunications Services Inc of Tampa, Fla., also announced a service-bureau concept for location services.
“Location-based information is the industry’s next wave of services that help wireless operators win customers and reduce churn. Our service-bureau solution allows wireless operators to differentiate themselves in the crowded marketplace with a real, value-added feature that is simple to deploy, requires no large up-front investment in infrastructure and leverages their existing investment in handsets, networks and location-finding technologies,” said Joy Nemitz, GTE-TSI assistant vice president.
Location technology seemed like a new technology, but in a move that exemplifies the age of this sector, the era of consolidation hit the location industry at the CTIA show as TruePosition Inc. announced it was acquiring KSI Inc. Both companies offer network-based solutions which they believe will be better received by carriers who do not wish to change out the handsets of all of their users.
Of course each vendor believes it has the superior choice but analysts believe that, like most telecom technologies, one size does not fit all and that a lot of carriers will end up choosing different solutions for different situations.
Some carriers and location vendors are already linking up.
Sprint PCS recently began offering its Wireless Web customers the location-based information services of Go2 Systems Inc. Go2 of Irvine, Calif., is a global addressing and locator system designed for Internet-ready mobile communications devices. Sprint customers now can access more than 300 Go2 Web sites about specific topics such as Go2hotels.com and Go2banks.com.
SignalSoft Corp. of Boulder, Colo., has an agreement with AT&T Wireless Services Inc. for its location technology currently being used to comply with the 911 mandate.
There are also vendor-to-vendor link-ups. XYPoint Corp. recently announced partnerships with Vicinity Corp. and GeoVector to provide wireless customers with location-based services with pointing technology via a voice user interface blended with text messaging technology.
While carriers and vendors look to capitalize on today’s mandate, John Zeglis, president of AT&T Corp. and chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T Wireless, urged CTIA attendees to look to the future. To the convergence of location technology and other smart technologies. For example, when you are running out of milk, your smart refrigerator will not just write it on your electronic shopping list, but if location technology tells the network that you are near a grocery store, it will alert you to go buy milk.
While carriers were in New Orleans trying to figure out how to reap benefits from the 911 mandate, the importance of location technology for emergency rescue was again spotlighted in Texas when a woman drove into a ditch and could not tell an emergency dispatcher where she was located. Eventually the woman and her 7-week old child were located and now are said to be recovering in the hospital.
Even Phase I would have helped find the unidentified woman, but Phase I has yet to be deployed in the vast majority of areas despite an April 1, 1998, deployment deadline.
Phasing in E911 was the result of an agreement between public-safety officials and the wireless industry in 1996. Phase I required carriers to provide PSAPs with call-back and cell-site (or base station) information when 911 is dialed.
Phase II, which requires wireless carriers to provide PSAPs with ALI accurate to 410 feet, has different implementation deadlines for network-based technologies and for handsets using GPS technologies.
Originally, Oct. 1, 2001, was the Phase II E911 deadline for the wireless industry. But the FCC modified that in September to accommodate different E911 technologies.
It is against this ever-approaching deadline that companies announced testing and trials across the country and in Europe. Cell-Loc Inc. said it completed Phase I testing of its Cellocate System for Time Division Multiple Access. For Code Division Multiple Access, Cell-Loc noted it had achieved 15-meter accuracy in several tests.
The problem now, according to George Heinrichs, president and CEO
of SCC Communications Corp., is that many PSAPs think they can leapfrog Phase I and go directly Phase II. Not so, says Heinrichs. “You
really need the Phase I support for Phase II,” he said.
SCC provides 911 operations support systems for both landline and wireless carriers. Its systems support all aspects of 911 data transmission including automatic location identification.
