Location-Based Services: Not Ready for Prime Time

The vendor hype about location-based services can be put into one succinct slogan: It's not just for E-911 anymore. Location vendors are touting the nascent services as a tremendous commercial opportunity as well. But industry insiders forecast that major challenges will delay the global commercialization of location-based services.

One such prognosticator, Barney Dewey, recently declared that ubiquitous offerings of commercial location-based services are not in the industry's near future.

"I think they're coming for the wireless E-911 stuff," the senior partner in the Andrew Seybold consulting firm said. "But the bigger issue is: Will the wireless operators provide this information to anybody other than the public-safety agencies?"

According to Dewey, the challenges include how to ensure subscribers' privacy, the need for position-reporting standards and costs associated with equipping networks or moving subscribers to location-capable handsets.

Dewey said providers have not seriously addressed the privacy issues related to these kinds of services.

"Most people are going to use their phones for voice, and a lot of people are not going to feel good about the carrier being able to find them where they are," he said.

The analyst bases his opinion in part of stories he said he's heard about problems encountered with wireless locating systems in vehicles. According to the stories, when leased vehicles containing the devices are returned to GM, many have had the location part of the equipment ripped out.

As for the issue of interoper-ability among air-interface and applications standards, Dewey said: "I don't know that it's a big issue. But until there are standard ways of reporting where the location is, it's going to be difficult for people trying to do services."

The recent formation of a group known as the Location Inter-operability Forum (LIF) provides one clue that Dewey might be onto something. The forum, set up by Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia, aims to develop guidelines for open location standards and pass its recommendations along to industry standards groups such as the TIA and the WAP Forum.

"What people are doing now is basic," said Cherie Gary, a Nokia spokesperson, explaining the importance of LIF's work. "What we're moving toward is much more mature."