Adding value with location based telecom services
WITH ADVANCED technologies taking front-end exploitation in communication systems, more and more new and value added services are being introduced by Service Providers of Telecom.
More specifically, the Mobile Service providers are having an edge over others, after the implementation of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and WAP in their networks. Location Based Services (LBS), for the mobile phone users come as a customer centric facility, with ability to deliver more personalised service.
Location Based Service in the mobile environment is an application of mobile networking to offer useful location related information to customers, using powerful homing devices such as cell phone and components in the network like BTS.
Multifarious uses
Some of the services available under LBS are:
Fleet management: This is an advanced transit management system that automates vehicle travel, trip request, trip accounting, scheduling, dispatch management and meets demand-responsive transport management with near perfect logistics planning. Information services: The customer can search for the nearest shopping mall/hospital/restaurant or any other utility service available in that location where he is currently present.
Navigational information: Mobile user gets information related to road closures, diversion of routes, driving directions and dynamic traffic information on his mobile handset.
Security of moving assets: This enables location determination and transmitting the information to a centralised server and thereby, anybody can monitor the safety of the car or any moving work force in high risk zones..
Entertainment: LBS enables customers to use their mobile services to enter into interactive radio/video participation in competition, and the like. Location based billing: The user could enjoy preferential billing facility, say, flat-rate calling while in home-zone and special rates while in other defined zones. Service providers gain by this. To avail this LBS, what is essentially required by the user is a WAP enabled handset and a 32K SIM card on a post-paid service of any mobile operator who has already upgraded his network with GPRS.
. Geographic Information System (GIS) provides important tools to provide, administer and interpret base map data. .
Gateway and mediator
From the radio frequency characteristics of mobile network provided to GIS, the cell location area of the user is derived. Here location management function acts as a gateway and mediator between positioning equipment and LBS infrastructure. The basic technology used is called GPS (Global Positioning System).
The GPS transceiver in the mobile handset provides accurate position data to a WAP website, which will then send personalised content to the device through GPRS. The cell Id and BTS location where the mobile is currently available is another very important parameter to identify location and with additional parameters such as location type, format of longitude/latitude, geocentric position, time and orientation/direction, the GIS is able to give near accurate position.
Many in the market
Many LBS solutions are available in the market and are offered by telecom majors like Ericcson, Motorola and others such as Autodesk and Mapquest.
Mobile positioning System (MPS) of Ericsson works on a gateway between mobile network and location-dependent applications using content and application middleware, GIS and access to mobile handsets of both technologies that is, GSM and CDMA.
`MapQuest' gives a product to deploy Web services that give ability to incorporate maps, and driving directions.
This allows developing Web based locators. Real Time is another programme that uses infrared (IR) and Radio Frequency (RF) technology to monitor the precise location of people or work force and automatically generate event associated location data.
Some of the constraints causing delay in the introduction of LBS are, availability of handsets incorporated with GPS functionality chipset, slow migration to 3G by the mobile operators and not-so encouraging demand from customer side.
Market research on these LBS solutions brings to light the need for standardisation of LBS solution to enable the operator and user to smoothly migrate to 3G.
A. GANESAN
Deputy General Manager, BSNL
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