CES: AT&T opens up location to WaveMarket

Location-based services (LBS) provider WaveMarket announced today it has signed up AT&T (NYSE:T) to its Veriplace Location Platform Initiative, expanding its location network to include nearly 130 million mobile subscribers. The companies announced the partnership at AT&T’s Developer Summit in advance of the Consumer Electronics Show, billing it as a trial program to open up AT&T’s location infrastructure to more than 1,000 third-party developers.

Today’s announcement is the biggest WaveMarket has ever made, according to CEO Tasso Roumeliotis. Combining AT&T’s reach with existing customer Sprint’s 50 million subscribers makes it the largest location network in the world, he said.

With Veriplace, a privacy-protected location aggregation platform, WaveMarket takes responsibility of approving and monitoring LBS away from the carriers. Now, developers will be able to create location-aware apps for AT&T customers spanning all devices, including the iPhone, which is notable considering Apple’s hesitancy to include location-based software in its handsets. Roumeliotis noted that prior to today’s announcement, developers had to create an application and submit it for approval in the App Store if they wanted to access location. Now they can locate an iPhone from the server side and build services directly on the Web.

These services could include SMS, Web, WAP and IVR apps that can employ location information even when the app is not in use. The service also gives customers control of their privacy and security settings for each app. For example, if a customer opts into a weather app, it can send her an alert as an SMS on an approaching storm even if that app isn’t actively running. Customers can also revoke permission for an application to locate them or change the parameters of the locating at any time. This level of customer-control is essential to WaveMarket’s platform, as well as to attracting carriers to use the service, Roumeliotis said.

“Obviously, given the fact that it has taken a long time for this to happen, there are some very major concerns that all the carriers have,” he added. “The first and foremost concern is that location data is very sensitive and operators want to make sure your location data is well protected.”

For developers, the agreement with AT&T also means they only need a single API to leverage network location across two carriers for now, but Roumeliotis said WaveMarket has invested with the expectation that all the operators will be opening up location very soon. They are deeming the AT&T relationship a trial – or an open Beta – for now to make sure subscribers are fully protected, but it is open to all AT&T subscribers, he added.

“The goal of the Veriplace platform is to do with location what has happened with SMS, which is offer cross-carrier location aggregation,” Roumeliotis said. “You can send SMS across carrier or launch premium services, no matter which carrier you are on. We want to provide the same functionality for location-based services, i.e. be able to locate every phone, not just smartphones or Android, but every phone – even feature phones.”