ankit1kumar
-
11:50:27 am on August 29, 2010 |
Location based services – introduction, technology and workings
It was only my Day 7 in the United States; staying at my friend’s place in Radford Court adjoining the Lake Washington in Seattle, I decided to give a surprise visit to some of my other friends in Redmond. Equipped with the navigational instructions that I took from Google maps, I rented a car and embarked on my 1st driving expedition in the US (yes – without a GPS). It was indeed a pleasure driving an automatic transmission car on nicely paved tarmac with everyone driving in their own lanes – quite in contrast to what I am used to experiencing back home in New Delhi. Soon I was on expressway 520 & was speeding at 70mph. The speed limit I guess was 55mph, but who cares it was my first drive in the US & I was loving it. It wasn’t too long before I overshoot one of the expressway exits and my excitement soon ended. Getting a bit worried, I decided to take the next exit and rely on my own sense of direction to somehow get back on the original road that I had planned to take. But the road I took swirled quite a bit and it was almost a mile before I could reach the next intersection. Surely by then I had lost all my sense of direction and was wondering where to go next. Welcome to America!!
Had this happened in India, I would have easily parked on the side lines & enquired any pedestrian for instructions, or better, simply rolled my windows & asked the guy in the car next to mine for advice while being caught in traffic. But not here in the US! It’s not that the people here are not helpful, but it’s simply because there aren’t many pedestrians on roads, or the traffic simply doesn’t move slow enough for one to be able to speak to the person in the adjacent vehicle. Nevertheless, I ended up calling my friends in Redmond for help, the ones I had originally planned to surprise that Sunday morning. Ok, I now appreciate why people in this country always carry a GPS. But what is it in a GPS that makes it such a utilitarian device? Is it the technology or something else? To back up a step further, why am I sharing my experience with you today?
Well, I recently got an opportunity to work as a Marketing intern for a Seattle based company which is utilizing Location Based Services to deliver a mobile phone based solution that enables businesses to reach out to their target customers at a right place & at a right time. As a result of my research in this area I have come to appreciate the power of the underlying principle that such services operate upon, and the advancements in the mobile technology that is driving the adoption of such services by an increasingly large number of businesses. In this series of posts, I want to share with you my understanding of some of the above areas and I will start by introducing Location Based Services (LBS), its workings & the underlying technology. We will then take a look at the usefulness of LBS and the various applications that make use of such services. Next we will examine how mobile communications technology has provided a platform for businesses to advertise their offerings or to market their services. Eventually we will cover the concerns surrounding the LBS and the usage of mobile services as an advertising and/or delivery mechanism. To conclude, I will like to discuss a few success stories around some of the companies that have successfully incorporated both LBS & mobile advertising in their business models and how they are able to offer more effective services to their customers & end users.
So what makes GPS such a useful device? Of course the technology is the driving force but the real power comes from the underlying principle that the device operates upon – the principle of Location Based Services. Location Based Services or
LBS are a means of offering the requisite service to the user based upon his or her geographic position at a given point in time. By keeping track of the user’s whereabouts at a particular instance, the system provides the most relevant information/service to the user depending upon his/her most current known position. According to Brimicombe, 2002, LBS is the intersecting space between the 3 technologies – the Internet, the Geographic Information Systems and the Mobile Telecommunications technologies. Interestingly, the LBS concept is not new and it has been in use for a number of years now in the form of GPS devices that we use in cars for navigation. The GPS device communicates the user’s current geographic position and the system delivers the instructions back to the user for reaching his destination, often in the form of appropriate road markings on the spatial map to follow.
There are 5 basic components that are required for delivering a location based service, according to Steiniger, Neun & Edwardes (Univ. of Zurich), namely the Mobile Device, the Communication Network, the Positioning system, the Service Provider and the Content Provider.
Source: Foundations of Location Based Services, Steiniger, et al.
Mobile devices: These are the tools that a user uses to request the needed information. The results can be given by speech, using pictures, text, etc. Possible devices are PDA’s, Mobile Phones, Laptops, etc. but the device can also be a navigation unit of car or a toll box for road pricing in a truck.
Communication Network: The mobile network that transfers the user data and service request from the mobile device to the service provider and then the requested information back to the user.
Positioning Component: For the processing of a service user position can be obtained either by using the triangulation methods in the mobile communication network or by using the Global Positioning System.
Service and Application Provider: The service provider offers a number of different services to the user based on user’s interest & user’s location. It is also responsible for processing the service request.
Data and Content Provider: Service providers will usually not store and maintain all the information which can be requested by users. Therefore geographic base data and location information data will be usually requested from the maintaining authority (e.g. mapping agencies) or business and industry partners (e.g. yellow pages, traffic companies)
Clearly all the above components play a critical and essential role in the delivery of location based service to the end user. The user needs a mobile device as an interface to access the service. There is a need for a communication network that enables real time communication between the user, the service provider and the positioning system. Then of course are the positioning system – providing the up to date location of the user, and the content/data providers – supplying the basic information on varies entities such as local businesses that can be of value to the service providers. I think it is the interoperability between the mobile, positioning & communications technologies that has created new opportunities for service providers who are creating innovative applications & devising interesting ways to create value out of the available content and offer more attractive & useful services to the consumers and the businesses. In the next post I will like to through some light on the usefulness of LBS offerings and discuss the various kinds of applications that can be built to take advantage of LBS.
Advertisement
