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Mobile Positioning and Location Based Services: An Insight into the Future of Mobile
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What is LBS?
Location based services are basically services built on knowing where you are and knowing what’s around you.
Challenges for LBS in India
1) India does not have standardised addresses
2) People in India have this cultural nuance of asking for directions on the road.
LBS means different things for consumers and different things for corporates:
Corporates may want to have LBS for sales force tracking or asset based tracking.
Consumers may want to enable LBS to know where their friends are or where their wife is. In a sense though, consumer based LBS platforms are quite restricted.
For LBS, they 3 key things are:
1) Technologies
2) Handsets
3) Applications
Demystifying Location Services from a Technological Perspective:
Location Services have been there for years. The initial boost was done through Cell ID. This kind of system tracks a phone from the nearest cell phone tower. This system is not particularly effective primarily because the distance between 2 towers often tends to be phenomenal. So for example in Worli in Mumbai, there are totally 3 towers for any particular mobile service provider. Worli is about 7 sq. km. So imagine the accuracy.
Now Satellites GPS and AGPS (Assisted GPS) one can effectively track the location of an individual to the tune of 10 metres.
It basically works when 3 satellites get a fix on a particular individual’s mobile by forming a triangle. The net result is computed into a location server in the form of geographical co ordinates (think latitude and longitude) and then represented on a map, which is then delivered to a user.
Thus to sum it up concisely, one may need LBS for the following reasons:
- Real Time Fleet and Asset Management
- Friend Finder
- Location Based Advertisement
- Location Based Chatting Service
One may also create certain ‘restricted areas’ for their kids and if they cross that area, an SMS is delivered to the parent. So if you are a parent and do not want your kid to go to Grant Road East for example, you can mark that out as a restricted area.
The idea of location based Ads seems extremely interesting because it take ‘contextual’ to a new level.
So far the problem for LBS in India was the fact that there were no maps for representation of the GPS co ordinates. That however is changing now with Map My India’s extremely accurate maps and they have shown a lot of interest with respect to sharing their API’s.
LBS is a cool word to use these days, provided we have a the right kind of urge to implement the location services in India.
Its not essential to have a proper address, LBS uses the geo coding tags, which is been evaluated with Lat and long, the only direct adherence to use of LBS is tie up with a Mobile operator who is been sitting on top of Cell ID fro over many years now, they haven’t been so very open to exposing the CELL ID which could lead the way for LBS.
Another question, what would you do only with CELL ID, who would provide the Contents fro Ads, restaurant data or whatever, its essential to have a content team with Geo spatial data ready and reckoning.
We have been involved with it for many months now, and @ yulop we would bring about the LBS within few weeks now fro Blore followed by many cities….
I appreciate the post for articulating it well!
I have been waiting for LBS since ages now. Yes, although mobile phones (location) and GPS have been around for some time now, a real consumer-driven application is yet to make any impact.
I am interested in location base (contextual) ads.
I liked your attempt at demistyfying the technology and the figure that you put. Good work.
Harshil,
Great post. We are doing an LBS search engine which is out in july.
You had some nice ideas for LBS applications. I’m subscribing to your blog.
Keep it coming.
Thanks.
Thanks sridhar and Muthu. Sridhar you have outlined some extremely relevant concerns. And some great insights as well.
@Muthu - You seem to be working on an extremely interesting product. Our sister concern http://www.watconsult.com would be more than happy to work with you on an ideation and consumer relevance project for the search engine. We are mostly in the business for this kind of extremely interesting work. Do get in touch with us if you feel like we are worthy enough :D. Thanks for subscribing!
@Harshil Karia
Sorry, couldn’t catch up on your comment in time. I’m following you in twitter (intellibitz). Will contact you at the right time, so we can work out something together.
no worries!