By Adam Foster, 15th December 2008

"He started his car and drove south toward the Lincoln Tunnel, not far from the Empire State Building. The global positioning system was on and tracking our every move. But Smith was not as impressed with it as he used to be. New cell phones, he said, can be programmed to transmit their location every few seconds to the mobile network. He steered his way through the tunnel and, on the New Jersey side, went to a tollbooth."

'No place to hide' is how Robert O'Harrow, Jr feels about the digital world in his book with the same title. In particular how the development of mobile technology has led to the ability to track a persons location via the signal transmitted by a mobile phone. It is widely argued that this kind of technology has both positive and negative aspects of its use.

A location-based service (LBS) is an information and entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device – Wikipedia 2008©

A simple definition, however this is where the simplicity ends and further exploration into this new technology unveils a complex technological infrastructure which has the potential to become an extremely powerful resource.

Location based services are a convergence of telecommunication technologies (see Figure 1), and have the ability to deliver customised content to users based on their current location and their personal interests.  Via Global Positioning technology and a mobile device, users can receive locals for the nearest business or service such as a cash machine, a hospital, be alerted to traffic jams or even find a friend. With newer services, users don’t even need to enter their location, as it is automatically known to the system.

LBS Convergence

Originally released in Japan by KDDI back in 2001, location based services have seen huge developments. Figures released by ABI Research estimate that by 2011 the total population of GPS enabled location based services subscribers will reach 315 million. With Korea and Japan continuing to spearhead the development of LBS, North America is expected to see significant consumer growth in the near future. Large network carriers in the United States have begun driving LBS adoption, with both Nextel and Verizon entering into the market.

The main technologies involved within LBS are the obvious GPS technology but also other mobile positioning technologies, which are predominantly network based and require signal triangulation from mobile phone cell sites. In order for location based services to work there needs to be what is called ‘LBS middleware’. The middleware for any service is the application, which doesn’t necessarily provide the service but enables the service to work, and acts as a gateway between the equipment and the infrastructure. The most common middleware within location based services would be the location manager function; within the LBS application it converts positioning information into functional location information.

Context aware services are the latest technology being used in conjunction with location based services, to add another level to mobile awareness. These services have the ability to record user behavioral patterns and aim to provide customised content by collecting such data and targeting that audience.

With all this location based/context aware technology emerging and with the ability to pinpoint a person’s specific location, does this new technology really improve lifestyle convenience or are we just reaching too far?

There are many issues that surround these services. On one hand there is obviously a huge market for them, with benefits to areas such as personal communication and safety; but at what cost? What information is actually being transmitted through these services? Is the users privacy at risk? Is this just another tool for surveillance? Are we being watched?