Contents - Connect-World
Contents - Connect-World
Contents - Connect-World
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Location Based Systems<br />
Figure 1: Powerful new applications have been deployed recently in<br />
the Asia-Pacific region.<br />
of the global GSM subscriber market,<br />
in both established and emerging<br />
markets.<br />
The main findings were:<br />
ˆ Demand for high accuracy solutions<br />
is growing as operators seek to<br />
differentiate their service offerings in<br />
saturating markets.<br />
With operators planning to deploy<br />
new high accuracy location technologies,<br />
new market entrants are looking<br />
to high accuracy location-based services<br />
as an immediate marketing<br />
advantage in the fight for customers;<br />
ˆ Although high accuracy location<br />
solutions will be the catalyst for location-based<br />
services, deployment costs<br />
must be extremely cost-effective;<br />
ˆ Existing low accuracy Cell-ID<br />
based services have proved disappointing<br />
in terms of application innovation<br />
and consumer take-up;<br />
ˆ Corporate vehicle, fleet and workforce<br />
management will help drive<br />
early usage of high accuracy services<br />
in the corporate market;<br />
ˆ The major consumer market driver<br />
will be information services, with<br />
rapid growth predicted for personal<br />
and child safety services.<br />
Since this research took place, the<br />
market has moved forward, underlining<br />
the rapid pace at which location<br />
based services are moving into the<br />
mainstream of operator service<br />
deployments.<br />
“The increased bandwidth<br />
of WCDMA promises<br />
even higher accuracy<br />
levels and new opportunities<br />
for applications<br />
developers to exploit.”<br />
Powerful new applications<br />
have been deployed<br />
recently in the Asia<br />
Pacific region, highlighting<br />
the willingness of<br />
operators to launch new<br />
location-enabled services<br />
for the enterprise market.<br />
In China, a cooperative<br />
approach between operators,<br />
value added service<br />
providers and solution<br />
providers is a perfect<br />
example of this progress.<br />
Within months of successful<br />
technology trials<br />
in a mix of dense urban, suburban<br />
and rural environments a new generation<br />
of high accuracy location-based<br />
services will be launched for the<br />
enterprise market in early 2005.<br />
Vehicle, personnel and asset tracking<br />
will be the initial services offered, but<br />
it should not be long before we see<br />
consumer services available from<br />
every handset.<br />
The scene described in the opening<br />
paragraph of this article is becoming<br />
a reality. Location is rapidly emerging,<br />
not just as a standalone service,<br />
but to enable widely accepted everyday<br />
applications.<br />
These lessons will soon be used in<br />
new WCDMA, broadband mobile systems;<br />
location is expected to be one of<br />
the fundamental drivers for service<br />
take-up.<br />
The increased bandwidth of WCDMA<br />
promises even higher accuracy levels<br />
and new opportunities for applications<br />
developers to exploit.<br />
Location is moving into the mainstream.<br />
It is one of the best examples<br />
of an emerging technology in the<br />
wireless world today. Operators are<br />
making it a key part of their service<br />
portfolio, major global solution<br />
providers are integrating the technology,<br />
new devices and exciting and<br />
innovative location-based services<br />
are gaining traction.<br />
Not that long ago, location-based<br />
services were both hype and hope.<br />
Today, we can see they are very much<br />
a reality. <br />
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