Reader Forum: The next generation of location-based services

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but maintain some editorial control so as to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: dmeyer@ardenmediaco.com or tford@ardenmediaco.com.
In emergencies, people find themselves in immediate need of assistance anywhere, anytime. The ability of a public-safety agency to accurately, reliably and rapidly locate the individual in any environment, irrespective of the settings and capabilities of the person’s mobile device can mean the difference between life and death.
The stakes in commercial location-based services (LBS) are considerably less, and, until now, so were the capabilities. However, innovative “pattern-matching” technologies – refined and hardened in mission-critical public-safety applications such as emergency response, government security and law enforcement – are being extended to commercial LBS. Breakthroughs in how precisely, quickly and reliably mobile devices can be pinpointed are set to transform the LBS user experience.
In the upgrade to 3G and 4G networks, operators are looking at how to reap new benefits from their mandated investment in E911 capabilities by differentiating commercial offerings with enhanced enterprise and consumer LBS.
Commercial LBS are available on mobile phones today, but their value is typically limited to turn-by-turn navigation and points of interest or user-initiated mobile search.
The problem is that many of the technologies that underlie today’s LBS offerings are unable to locate a mobile-phone user precisely, quickly or reliably in challenging environments, such as urban centers and indoors. Cell-ID/Enhanced Cell-ID (ECID), for example, can determine only approximate locations of handsets based on crude location information from cell towers. Assisted Global Position System (A-GPS) can provide more precise locations for users in suburban and rural areas, but it is unable to function reliably where line of sight is obstructed, such as indoors or dense urban environments, and must often fall back to other, less-precise technologies. And even though Wi-Fi might occasionally deliver sufficient accuracy outdoors, it suffers from location dead zones indoors; plus, it must be available and activated on user handsets, which significantly restricts the potential footprint of a service.
To attract a new wave of interest from business customers or consumers, next-generation commercial LBS must be able to rapidly and precisely locate any and all users automatically where people live and work – inside places like office buildings, shopping malls and homes. In the gathering commercial LBS marketplace, indoors and urban areas are where it’s at.
Network-based pattern-matching technology, a software-based location method, operates in fundamentally different ways than do the other technologies. To determine the user’s location, signal strength data, time delays and other network measurements that are relayed through the wireless network are compared against a database of predicted values. A given mobile device’s signature values are unique and, therefore, can be identified and located accordingly. Pattern matching operates without regard to subscriber setting of services (Wi-Fi on/off, GPS on/off, etc.), and no additional hardware is required in operator networks or user devices. From the smartest of the smart phones to the dumbest of the dumb handsets, pattern-matching software can ubiquitously locate devices across an operator’s entire subscriber base.
The solution can consistently and in real time locate a mobile subscriber to within 50 meters, even when indoors or in a dense urban area. In fact, shadowing from large buildings, walls and other complex clutter actually enriches the location signature and, thereby, increases the precision. As more capabilities and sensors are introduced in future handsets and as networks grow denser, pattern-matching technologies will continue to refine accuracy levels to less than 10 meters. Over time, commercial LBS will see innovation thanks to the availability of more and more contextual information. For example, three-dimensional location is a frontier of development in pattern matching; this would allow the floor of a building where the mobile-phone user is at the moment to be discerned.
How might high-accuracy pattern-matching technology transform the LBS user experience?
–Parents using a child-finder application would be able to see not only which neighborhood but also which specific house their child is visiting.
–Coupons could be pushed to all potential customers as they enter a defined zone near a given store, even indoors.
–An enterprise could enhance security and efficiency with significantly more precise asset- and fleet-tracking and workforce mission-critical applications, especially in dense urban and indoor areas.
In many cases, operators are already making the investments that would be necessary to enable the next-generation LBS offerings today.
The pattern-matching technologies have proven themselves in deployments for compliance with emergency-services regulations such as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission E911 Phase II. In the United States, as long as the operator partitions the mandated emergency-services from commercial traffic, the same high-accuracy location solution can enable both sets of services.
“The good news for operators implementing Phase II E911 solutions is that the billions of dollars required to implement these emergency services can be leveraged by U.S. operators to produce commercial LBS,” said Brent Iadarola, research director for Frost & Sullivan’s mobile and wireless communications practice. A high-accuracy location capability “promises a lucrative revenue stream and presents operators with a way to differentiate services in an increasingly competitive mobile environment.”
The difference that innovative pattern-matching technology brings to LBS is distinct. The ability to more accurately and quickly locate all mobile-phone users in any environment, especially dense urban and indoors where devices are used the most and alternative technologies can’t deliver location accuracy with sufficient reliability, stands to help operators garner new customers, reduce churn and unleash additional revenue streams.