A Location Technology Tutorial

Introduction
In the mid-1990s, mobile location services appeared to be one of the next natural steps in our move towards a truly unwired, permanently connected society. The ability to link a user's content and personalized services with his geographic location seemed like a killer application-an application with the potential to bring new waves of revenue and customer loyalty to an industry already riding high.

Backed by venture capital and fueled in part by the dot.com frenzy, the potential of location services appeared limitless, bringing together customers, service providers, technology vendors, content owners and application developers to create new and innovative value chains. Higher-speed data services, which were just around the corner, also added considerable momentum to the location and content concept.

Since the manic optimism of that time, the industry has learned many important lessons about developing, launching and managing successful location-based services. A very different commercial environment, as well as changes and choices in technology over the last few years, put pressure on location platform vendors to develop appropriate new solutions.

Key issues addressed by industry included:

• The harsh financial realities affecting mobile service providers around the world
• The increased emphasis on return on investment and reduced integration costs
• The growing complexity of the underlying radio, data, and application infrastructures
• The fragmented nature of the whole content and value chain with many different partners involved
• The relative uncertainty about which handset or network-based positioning technologies should be used
• The cost implications of upgrading existing proprietary switching infrastructures

Collectively, these factors prompted an industry-wide re-examination of location-based services. As a result, new solutions are emerging.

The industry's experience is now proving invaluable as mobile service providers seek to use location services to exploit their existing investments in both branding and infrastructure-as well as capture additional revenue streams while positioning themselves for a far more content-oriented future. On top of these business drivers, government-mandated requirements that location information be delivered to emergency service providers-known as E1-1-2 in Europe and E9-1-1 in the United States-are stimulating an industry-wide focus on location issues. Additionally, standardization work in a range of areas is starting to erode many historically difficult interface and interworking issues.

TCS has been at the forefront of location innovation since its ground-breaking work carried out in the U.S. E9-1-1 environment. TCS continues to lead the industry advancement of location-based services for the mobile community, with recent launches including Location JumpStart^TM, an all-in-one location services package for service providers, and Xypages^TM, a location-enabled mobile directory service.

This white paper examines the key issues within the location services arena for mobile service providers, application providers and content partners. Additionally it highlights developments and strategies that can cut the cost of entry, speed return on investment and grow profitable alliances with other partners in the value chain.