LAS VEGAS-Perhaps the most eagerly awaited applications in the wireless industry are mobile-location services, which promise to be a mobile-phone user’s guide and information guru, even in the most unfamiliar of places. Unfortunately, the U.S mobile-location service industry still has some work to do and patience to muster if it wants to be in line with other leading wireless markets, such as Europe and Japan.
Leaders from several m-location companies discussed and sometimes disagreed over various industry issues during a panel session on location-based services at the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association Wireless 2001 show last week. Nearly everyone agreed that mobile-location services are going strong in Europe where short messaging service has been a popular mainstay for quite a while, but here, where there are still pockets of the country that can’t get consistent voice service, mobile-location companies have a long road ahead of them.
Location-based service providers eager to crack the U.S. market are reluctantly stuck behind the Federal Communications Commission’s E911 Phase II mandate. Industrywide, most wireless carriers are waiting until they are E911-compliant before launching value-added capabilities such as restaurant location and navigation, and several have yet to even decide whether they will go with a handset- or network-based solution.
Handset-based location providers also have the additional challenge of deploying reasonably priced handsets.
“The real challenge is getting handset price points to where they need to be,” said Tom Wrappe, vice president of product and program management for SnapTrack Inc.
J.F. Sullivan, vice president of marketing for AirFlash Inc., said 87 percent of mobile-location usage outside the United States occurs between 7: 30 and 9: 30 on Friday and Saturday nights, supporting a previous comment he made that the most popular services are those that center around entertainment.
Sullivan asserted that the United States will not see widespread adoption of mobile-location services until users see the services as information and entertainment tools, and not just as a means to pinpoint a location in an emergency. Sullivan also said that as long as users are required to provide the zip code of where they are, location-based services will be slow to catch on because most people need these services the most when they’re in an unfamiliar location.
David Hose, president and chief executive officer of SignalSoft Corp., disagreed with Sullivan, noting that although a zip code is required, the services exist and are ready to use today, and improvements will come in time.
Across the board, the panel participants seemed anxious to get location-based services into the hands of the average cell-phone user.
“Let the deployment happen. Speed and accuracy are our mantra,” said Scott Pomerantz, president and CEO of Global Locate.
As soon as carriers decide to move on either a network- or handset-based E911 solution, the consensus was the mobile- location industry will be ready to step up.
