Imagine that you are driving in an unfamiliar town, looking for a specific residence or business. You need directions, but your mobile device only provides the street address. Would you be satisfied? Would you be much more satisfied if instead your mobile device displays turn-by-turn instructions, with updated traffic reports and options for alternate routing provided on-the-fly as weather conditions or traffic patterns changed? This is the relevance and rich promise that improved location-based services (LBS) infrastructure and applications deliver.

It really addresses a basic question, the one most asked since mobile phones were first introduced: "Where are you?" And while network operators saw the profit potential of LBS, the real-world success of location technology has been hampered by insufficient positioning technologies and a lack of richness and functionality in supporting applications, infrastructure and devices. Evolving standards have further contributed to sluggish adoption and challenged providers' abilities to demonstrate a successful business case. As a result, location-based services simply haven't lived up to the hype.

Now it's more than potential: The required technology is available today

Location positioning technology has improved dramatically over the past few years, and now a variety of options are available to meet specific application accuracy and cost requirements. For example, an emergency application needs high location accuracy first and cost is secondary, while a basic weather forecast requires low cost first and accuracy second.

Operators can also blend multiple technologies together to address technical challenges such as locating subscribers in an urban canyon or parking garage. In this situation, operators can flip from one technology to another to obtain the best fix on a subscriber. For example, an emergency application might use Assisted-Global Positioning System (A-GPS) with an Enhanced Observed Time Difference (EOTD) or Advance Forward Link Tri-lateration (AFLT) backup, to achieve the best positioning possible.

Delivering a better user experience

Digital devices and user-interfaces also have advanced, making it possible for operators to launch services with greater visual appeal and which are much easier to use than in the past. The larger, sharper screens on today's mobile devices offer rich color and additional capabilities that services can exploit. For example, a navigation service is much more compelling with a large, bright and colorful map instead of a cramped, black-and-white map on a small screen.

User-interfaces have also improved considerably. New applications can rely on clean, graphics-based mediums, which allow delivery of more sophisticated composite services that tie together multiple service enablers, including location. For example, a subscriber could leverage a mobile resource management services that ties together multiple service enablers like location, voice conferencing, instant messaging, presence, group list, and media. These services would be tied together, likely through the group list, so that the user experience is simple and seamless. The continuity provided dramatically enhances the user experience and drives service uptake and usage.

These enhanced user interfaces will be enabled by an open and flexible back-end service delivery ecosystem, based on the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) model. The service delivery model will leverage open APIs that securely abstract network complexity from developers, allowing a broader pool of developers to create end user services faster and with less risk. For example, a general mobile gaming company could easily add generic service enablers, such as voice conferencing and location, to their “I Spy” game without needing to have any telecom experience in-house.

Building a better business case

End user services, especially those leveraging location, have specific requirements in terms of accuracy and cost. Constructing a compelling business case to support the various services has been a difficult challenge for operators to overcome. Previously, service providers looking to incorporate LBS had their subscriber positioning options limited to "high accuracy/high cost," or "low accuracy/low cost" solutions. Since many common LBS applications such as container tracking or fleet management, require only mid-level location accuracy, the resulting solutions were either very accurate but prohibitively costly, or less expensive, but also correspondingly less useful. The business cases could not be mapped appropriately to the technology.

Today, the diversity of location technologies allows network operators to pair an acceptable cost with required positioning. In some scenarios, multiple accuracy levels (based on different technologies) will be blended within one end user service, to optimize the business model. For example, a container tracking service might require low-level accuracy most of the time, but high-accuracy for specific customer location requests or when the cargo gets close to its destination. This blended model, where cost/accuracy is optimized, allows more services to become profitably location-enabled.

Below, various sample services are listed, along with potential requirements for location. Note that many of these services below may use a higher or lower degree of accuracy based on specific requirements.

Location has arrived

We're now at the sweet spot where location technologies, service delivery ecosystems, consumer interest and the business case have come together. The key to profiting from location-based services lies in ensuring that the appropriate mix of technologies, applications, and other components is in place with resources flexibly allocated to complete the business case. As a critical differentiator in a crowded and competitive marketplace, location-based services have finally arrived.

Joe Dyoub is Hewlett-Packard’s Solution Manager for the Network and Service Provider Industry. Brent Collins is HP’s Marketing Manager for NSP Solutions.

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