How mobile operators can grab the opportunities to provide location-based services

By Martin Dawson,

It all began with the German authorities raising a flag back in May 2010 about Google’s data collection methods for its ‘Street View’ service. Since then, the search engine giant has faced volley after volley of negative press as authorities of different countries clamp down on Google’s unauthorized collection of data.

Korea is the latest in a list of countries to investigate Google’s data collection methods with the Korean National Police Agency raiding Google’s Seoul office in the first week of August 2010, seizing hard drives and other documents related to data collected as part of Street View. 

Google and other companies have merely been responding to the demand for supporting location applications on smart phones and other mobile devices. In order to capitalize on this demand, Google took on the ambitious task of surveying the world, or at least the parts considered important enough, to build a database that maps location to visible radio signal sources.

Such “world in a database” (WiDB) location services rely on measuring infrastructure that is not owned, operated, or otherwise under the control of the implementer of the location service, including cell towers and Wi-Fi access points. WiDB involves measuring and storing records related to other people’s generally private property.

Location-determination capabilities already exist within many mobile networks in support of emergency services. However, a problem lies with the fact that location information from these capabilities has not been accessible in the ways that device owners and network subscribers want to use it.

Mobile networks have long had the ability to determine and provide the location of end-devices. However, both the technical architecture of that capability and the applied business models have often been slanted toward supporting operator-controlled applications such as friend-finders and corporate fleet tracking.

This approach is not naturally sympathetic to the model of user-controlled applications we have seen emerging with smartphones and app stores. The result has been a vacuum that has not been filled by network operators but by companies like Google instead.

With all the hype over Google’s data sniffing activities, the balance of power looks to shift from service providers like Google back to the network operators. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is currently publishing new specifications that describe how any IP network including 3G, can provide a location service using standardized IP protocols.

HELD (for HTTP-Enabled Location Delivery) is a protocol that allows any device to query a network for its location – HELD is an open standard which allows any networkable computing device, wired or mobile, to ask the network for location.

The greatest distinction lies with the fact  that all applications on all devices can take advantage of the network regardless of the nature of the network – broadband DSL, enterprise LAN, or mobile 3G/4G – as these protocols create the equivalent of a common application programming interface (API) for location on the network that  all devices can access.

HELD creates the ability to obviate the current concerns related to Google’s location service issues. As operators own the network, they are able to use the network’s own infrastructure as a source of measurements without having to rely on storing records related to other people’s property. Because the operator is local to the point that location is being requested and used, it is subject to the applicable jurisdiction’s legislation and requirements associated with the handling of that location data.

Furthermore the network operator’s coverage ensures that the location service is available everywhere the network is, a guarantee that systems such as Google aren’t able to offer.

Most powerfully, the network operator represents a third party able to effectively validate the location information that device’s provide to applications. For an increasing large category of applications, this validation function is a significant requirement. Since the operator can measure their own infrastructure directly, there is not a fundamental dependency on measurements made by the end device; this underpins the operators’ ability to provide bona fide location information to applications. Mechanisms supported with HELD similarly support the procedures by which this validation can occur.

Network operators are in the best position to offer accurate, reliable, and ubiquitous location information that subscribers in the future will desire. Many networks already have the machinery needed for a great location service and only need to change the way the end-user gets access to it.

Therefore, and not just for the sake of redressing recent privacy concerns, let us hope that network operators choose to re-think how location services are accessed by end-users on the network and , at the same time, seize the opportunity to re-insert themselves in the location service value-chain.

Martin Dawson is  Director of the GeoLENs Location Server Business Unit at Andrew Solutions, a CommScope company.