BUCHAREST, Romania-As European wireless penetration rates increase, operators are looking to new services, including short message service (SMS) and fax and data transmissions, to increase profit margins. Another application, mobile positioning, is gaining importance across Europe.
According to U.K. telecom consultancy Ovum, the market for location-based services will increase to US$25 billion by 2005. Mobile positioning determines the geographic location of a mobile phone, and its applications are increasing around the globe.
In the United States, for example, telecom regulator Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is requiring all emergency calls from mobile phones be positioned to within 50 meters by 1 October, 2001, for terminal-based positioning methods or to within 100 meters accuracy for network-based positioning technology.
The European Union is following this trend, requiring emergency calls to be positioned as of 1 January, 2003.
Ericsson and Benefon are just two European communications companies that have supplied mobile positioning technology to wireless carriers. Ericsson demonstrated a flip-phone with a large display for mapping and other data applications earlier this year at the CeBIT exhibition in Germany. Benefon has already launched its GSM/global positioning system (GPS) handset called !ESC.
Future handset technology will display a dot indicating where a user is located and another dot indicating where a requested Greek restaurant is located, for example, along with a map indicating how the user gets to the restaurant.
And this is just one application, said industry officials.
“Many of these applications will be combined with the Internet in ways that improve quality of life, safety and efficiency for individuals and business,” said Christopher Kingdon, director of mobile positioning at Ericsson.
In principle, four key market segments are emerging, with many applications in each segment.
Fleet management-by knowing the location of their trucks, transport companies can reduce costs by planning more efficient routes for pickup and delivery.
Localized information-such as locations of the nearest gas stations, hotels or four-star restaurants.
Emergency services-to help speed response to incidents.
Network management-location-based billing and more efficient network planning for carriers.
Ericsson’s Mobile Positioning System (MPS) can deliver location estimates for mobile phones in terms of longitude and latitude. The information obtained can be used by any geographic information system (GIS) to plot locations with varying accuracies. At the heart of the MPS system is the Mobile Positioning Center, a positioning gateway deployed in the network that can support most telecom standards, such as GSM, AMPS/TDMA and next-generation wideband-CDMA systems. Ericsson said MPS’s advantage is its compatibility with all GSM mobile phones.
In 1999, Estonian wireless carrier Estonian Mobile Telephone (EMT) and Sweden’s Telia began commercially using Ericsson’s MPS system, which requires a network upgrade. During 2000, France Telecom, Vodafone AirTouch in the United Kingdom and Australia’s Telstra have implemented trial systems. Spain’s three wireless carriers-Amena, Telef
