While still slow to be adopted by wireless operators, wireless location service providers have accelerated their efforts to deliver effective technologies that can determine a wireless user’s position within the network.
SignalSoft Corp., a platform and applications developer, formed an agreement with Telcordia Technologies Inc. to integrate relevant software applications and platforms to enable location-based mobile-commerce services.
The agreement calls for Telcordia to integrate SignalSoft’s Wireless Location Services suite into its Mobile Services Suite and ISCP platform to offer Global System for Mobile communications and IS-41 operators a way to deploy location-based services.
Telcordia said it also will integrate SignalSoft’s products into its SPACE System, a graphical creation language component of the ISCP platform that allows operators to create and customize their own value-added services.
SnapTrack Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Inc., agreed to provide Itochu Techno-Science Corp. of Tokyo with its SmartServer-enabled wireless location platform, based on wireless-assisted GPS.
“CTC believes the market potential for personal location and navigation services in Japan is huge,” said Osamu Gotoh, CTC president.
The agreement calls for CTC to integrate SnapTrack’s Wireless Assisted GPS software into its mobile positioning server, which it will then market to wireless carriers in Japan.
SnapTrack’s system already is being used by NTT DoCoMo and is in commercial service.
Looking toward something new, Formida Software introduced its WISE wireless infrastructure software environment created to provide rapid deployment of location-based services.
The WISE platform aims to support not only phones, but wirelessly enabled personal digital assistants and browser-enabled devices, the company said. It supports both WAP and short message service.
Services include metadata classification, routing, geo-coding, proximity search, map rendering and secure location, the company said. It is built on the Oracle 8i database and interacts with data such as street names, points of interest, and corporate and location data.
Formida’s system also is used in Japan today as part of J-Phone’s J-Navi mobile Yellow Pages mapping service.
