Calling all carriers: TruePosition gives E911 location a marketing spin

TruePosition is using the results of a recent study to show carriers how they can take wireless enhanced 911 from rules to riches.

The company recently commissioned Public Opinion Strategies of Alexandria, Va., to survey current and potential wireless customers on their willingness to pay additional service fees for the security of knowing their 911 calls can be located. The study found that, on average in a sampling of 800 people, customers are willing to pay up to $3.30 for the service and rank it as more important than several other options--including caller ID, voice mail and digital transmission.

TruePosition aims to show carriers that installing E911 location capabilities now would not only bring their networks up to code, it could also create money-making potential.

"Rather than looking at this as a regulatory requirement, we're trying to get them to look at it as an opportunity," said Lou Stilp, vice president and general manager of TruePosition.

By order of the Federal Communications Commission, all wireless carriers must implement wireless emergency location systems by October 2001. But TruePosition maintains that doing it sooner will distinguish carriers in the competitive field and provide an additional revenue stream--all at very little initial investment or risk.

"Everyone is asking the question of whether they should deploy this now rather than four years from now," Stilp said. "[The survey] really drives home the point that this is a service people want and will pay money for. We're trying to point out that there's a value in being first."

Carriers' primary concern over deploying location services has been cost, so TruePosition plans to offer its location package on a turnkey basis. The company will put up the capital, engineer the system, furnish and install the equipment and act as a service bureau to carriers. That should alleviate carriers' concerns over their limited financial and human resources, Stilp said.

"Carriers don't have any capital because they've spent it all on digital, and they don't have people," he said. "Only when the entire system's ready end to end do they start billing their customers."

One surprising finding of the survey was that once wireless customers become aware of the availability of E911 location services, they are likely to seek out a carrier that offers them. Carriers tend to think that any additional costs passed on to users might cause them to churn, Stilp said.

"Carriers have been worried that people are going to leave," he said. "The survey says no." That finding confirms past assertions that for a large percentage of wireless users, safety and security is a paramount concern, Stilp added.

TruePosition has yet to seal any definitive agreements with carriers for its E911 location offering, but Stilp said that once the idea takes root it will spread rapidly because carriers won't want to be the only competitor that can't offer the service.

"I believe once the first couple of contracts get signed they'll start to come in like dominoes," Stilp said. "It's a competitive issue."

AMERITEL TOUTS NATIONAL PREPAID SERVICE

OSCI Inc.'s wholly owned subsidiary Ameritel Communications will now provide a national uniform-rate platform for prepaid cellular service. The company will use the ISIS prepaid cellular phone from Philips Electronics North America.

AIRADIGM HELPS TAKE A BITE

Northeastern Wisconsin PCS provider Airadigm Communications is teaming up with the Appleton, Wis., Police Department to assist crime victims. Airadigm recently donated several Einstein PCS phones and service contracts to the department's Victim Crisis Response Program to assist the group in communicating with victims and their family members.

POWERTEL TAPS ERICSSON's GSM COFFERS Powertel will buy GSM equipment from Ericsson--including mobile switching centers, base station controllers and radio base station equipment--to build out its PCS infrastructure in Kentucky and Tennessee. Powertel is already building out four other basic trading areas using Ericsson equipment.