Positioning location-based services for take-off

location based services

Carry the right device and you can pinpoint your physical location to within metres. This positioning accuracy is the basis of location-based services (LBS) such as personal navigation, vehicle tracking and emergency-service provision. Yet Europe’s business LBS market remains relatively stagnant. Armed with a new LBS knowledge base and a five-year R&D roadmap, one group of strategic researchers seeks to change that.
“Europe has invested significantly in LBS research, but today relatively few applications can use geo-location services successfully,” says Boris Grabner. He coordinates ISHTAR, an IST project assessing the development of location-based services in Europe, and with partners that include Alcatel Alenia Space, Teletel, NAVTEQ, TeleAtlas, Athens Technology Center and Telekom Austria.
In 2005, Europe’s LBS market was worth 274 million euro (source: Berg Insight); its growth is relatively slow. Grabner believes that now the technical standardisation issues have been solved, this slow rate of growth stems mainly from a lack of cooperation among European companies in LBS technologies, services and applications.
However the LBS market involves many players (from mobile device suppliers to the end-application editor, content providers and others), which makes cooperation a complex issue. Grabner believes that now almost all of the techniques are mature, more awareness actions need to be undertaken towards the end-user, promoting the benefits of LBS but at the same time reassuring them that care has been taken to protect their privacy.
Pan-European survey of LBS players Central to the work of the project has been a pan-European survey of key LBS players and experts, carried out in 2005. “The survey gave us a clear overview of LBS in Europe,” says Grabner. “It suggests avenues for related European research in IST, the Seventh Framework Programme and the Galileo satellite positioning system.”
The results of this survey showed transport and tourism as the most important LBS sector in Europe (15%), followed closely by tracking/monitoring (14%), information (13%), safety (12%) and fleet management (11%). Asked about market potential, three-quarters of those polled expect the sector to expand, citing the main market drivers as new devices/terminals plus new smart applications.
The path to expansion Yet if the LBS market is to grow, geo-location devices need ideally to work with all service providers, operators and networks. In short, location-based services need to be standardised. Such standardisation would facilitate the smooth delivery of content by everyone involved – the wireless vendors, IT companies, mobile operators, and the application and content providers.
The ISHTAR partners also recommend more focus on ‘personalisation’, going beyond the one-size-fits-all kind of service creation to make it easier to adapt services to specific individuals, which yields easily adaptable services from the operators and service providers. Hardware companies need to look at processing power and energy needs, to make more ergonomic devices and smoother services.
Content – its availability, quality and adaptability – is equally important. Grabner highlights the need to offer more specialised content, for example by integrating information from public authorities into the databases produced by map providers. He also emphasises content quality, as it can be the basis of service differentiation. Multimedia content needs to be adaptable for display on different devices from PDAs to laptops.
Lastly, indoor coverage must be enhanced – offering LBS to people in buildings through technologies such as Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) or WiFi. Here a commercial technology for continuous location (e.g. when moving from outdoors to the interiors of buildings) is still missing. Hybridisation of A-GPS with other techniques such as MEMS, WiFi and others needs to be taken into account. “Many European LBS projects are already looking at these areas,” notes Grabner. “We recommend more integration, standardisation and cross-fertilisation between them, especially in forthcoming projects.”
If Europe’s LBS market is to find its wings, certain barriers must disappear. “Our survey revealed that people fear being tracked,” he adds. “Why not develop a compliance code, obliging service providers to explain what they are doing with user information?”
The partners will be carrying out further analysis of the LBS market before the project’s end. They also intend to develop a business plan for related products, and to assess the potential for a European LBS forum.
Contact: Boris Grabner Telekom Austria AG Development Wireline Arsenal Objekt 22 A-1030 Vienna Austria Tel: +43 59059 1 43117 Fax: +43 59059 91 43117 Email: boris.grabner@telekom.at
Source: Based on information from Ishtar and Berg Insight