MOBILITY – The shape of things to come

Location-based services and emergency communications in IMT-2000

Mobile location technologies offer enormous possibilities for new wireless services and applications. Potential applications include emergency services such as the E911 in the United States and E112 in Europe, commercial end-user services (for example, local yellow pages), corporate services, of which fleet management is often cited and network optimization (e.g., location-aided handover).

Calling for a taxi from an airport without knowing the local number or calling an ambulance for help after witnessing a traffic accident in a remote area without knowing the location, finding a hassle-free route around a traffic jam or getting the closest parking space available at the push of a button — these are just a few of the many service offerings contributing to the excitement over location-based services. Most of these services have one thing in common that differentiates them from "plain" wireless services: they all use location awareness and deliver service to the user accordingly.

Given the global reach of IMT-2000 systems (the ITU name for the third generation (3G) of personal mobile communications), the growing importance of location-based services makes it urgent to harmonize national regulatory requirements for emergency communications; guarantee interoperability through globally agreed technical standards to enable the roaming of at least a basic set of these services; and address the complex legal issues of liability and privacy rights. 

Different drivers in the United States and in Europe

Initially, the emergence of location-based services was neither driven by revenue expectations nor by a clear market demand but, rather, by government regulation of emergency services. In the United States for example, regulatory requirements for emergency calls in cellular systems were first established in 1996 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted the wireless Enhanced 911 rules (www.fcc.gov/e911). These rules apply to all cellular, broadband personal communications service (PCS) and certain specialized mobile radio (SMR) licensees.

Many people recognize that a wireless phone is a valuable emergency tool that can be taken almost anywhere. For some users, the ability to call for help in an emergency is the principal reason they own a wireless phone. But that help my never come, or may come too late, if the 911 call does not get through or if emergency response teams cannot locate the caller quickly. In 1995, there were 34 million wireless subscribers in the United States, who, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, made 20 million 911 calls a year. Today, there are more than 116 million wireless subscribers and the number of wireless 911 calls is said to have more than doubled to over 50 million a year.

In this regard, the wireless E911 rules seek to improve the reliability of wireless 911 services and to provide emergency services personnel at the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) with location information that will enable them to locate wireless 911 callers much more quickly and to carry out their life-saving work more effectively and efficiently. Wireless carriers are required to provide Automatic Location Identification (ALI) from 1 October 2001.

Reports from wireless carriers (www.fcc.gov/wtb/e911), however, indicate that the wireless industry is facing difficulties meeting the E911 requirements because of the reluctance from major handset manufacturers, who consider the cost of deploying new chips to be too high, and also, many of them do not yet see a compelling case for location-based services.

In Europe, the 1999 Communications Review set 1 January 2003 as a target for the provision of Enhanced 112 services: "It is feasible and in the public interest to set a date by which all fixed and mobile operators provide caller location details to the emergency authorities when emergency calls are made. In view of the sensitivity of location data to the privacy of mobile callers, appropriate safeguards for personal data and privacy protection must be established to ensure compliance with the European Union (EU) rules in this area. Given the importance of such a facility for the European citizen and the state of technological development, location information for emergency authorities should be made available by 1 January 2003."

By contrast to the United States, there is neither a distinction between mobile and fixed operator obligations nor a mention of any prescribed accuracy levels, but privacy is recognized as a major issue. Furthermore, the importance of multi-lingual issues was recognized by the European Council in Lisbon in March 2000 and mentioned in "eEurope: An Information Society for All." This initiative states that by the end of 2001, "all citizens on the move throughout Europe should have full access everywhere to multi lingual support, call localisation and fully organized provision of emergency services through the 112 number."

On 5 May 2000, the European Commission (EC) launched a Coordination Group on Access to Location Information by Emergency Services (CGALIES). The group's objective is to provide support and expertise regarding the definition of a future Location-Based Emergency Call Service in Europe, taking into account all aspects related to the implementation of such a service, namely: user needs, institutional, technical and technological issues, as well as convergence with other applications.

The EC has proposed this enhancement of 112 emergency services in the context of its proposals for the new regulatory framework expected to enter into force in 2002 or 2003. An improved level of safety and security cannot, however, be achieved by compromising the principles of privacy. The EC has proposed data protection and privacy safeguards for the use of location data.

Europe follows a minimalist approach to regulation in particular with respect to mobile location and emergency services. This approach relies upon existing generic regulation (the Privacy Directives and rule of competition) and subsidiarity. In the case of the latter, responsibility for the E112 remains with national emergency authorities — a few countries are either currently considering issuing, or have already issued, E112 mandates.

In summary, while the uptake of location-based services in North America seems to be affected by the technology push resulting from the E911 mandate, Europe's approach is mainly driven by location-based value-added services (market pull) — the E112 emergency service only appearing recently on the political agenda.

 

Japan is a special case as its cities are notoriously difficult to navigate. Street names are increasingly popular but are still not universal. Instead, addresses have traditionally been written with respect to "chome," or urban districts. So, navigation systems such as those used in cars and for street maps are quite popular there. But this application has evolved beyond the vehicular environment, with NTT DoCoMo offering, since January 2000, its Global Positioning System or GPS-based mobile personal location service known as DokoNavi. Callers in Japan can access the GPS-based DokoNavi location service using a cellular phone linked to a personal digital assistant (PDA) from Denso called Naviewn to locate themselves in a wide range of environments. DokoNavi users have been offered a variety of information services such as town or area guidance (subscribers can get directions to businesses and points of interest, such as restaurants, movie theatres, amusement parks or museums) or personal route navigation. Here, subscribers can not only find their current location, but they may enter their destination and get detailed directions and maps sent to their Naviewn while on the move.

 

Privacy Complex ownership, privacy and liability issues are being raised relative to the provision of the positioning information and its usage following the US FCC E911 Report and Order. In fact, the E911 Report and Order has also added provisions dealing specifically with wireless location information to the section of the Communications Act that governs treatment of customer proprietary network information (CPNI) and subscriber list information (SLI). Furthermore, the FCC initiated a proceeding to interpret and clarify these provisions in early 2001.   The most important issue confronting the new industry of wireless signal location technology and applications relates to personal privacy Photo: PhotoDisc (ITU 010568) In Europe, the Privacy Directives (95/46/EC and 97/66/EC) apply with the following general principles: obtain the subscriber's explicit consent; provide complete information about the use and storage of data, only use data for the purpose for which it was collected, erase personal data after use or make it anonymous, give the user the possibility to restrict or prevent transmission of personal data, and do not transfer the data to a third party without the subscriber's explicit consent. Without question, the most important issue confronting the new industry of wireless signal location technology and applications relates to personal privacy. The difficulty is how to strike the right balance between solutions that will maintain both the value of protecting individual privacy and the value of achieving the benefits of new wireless location technologies. Recently, the ITU Secretary-General received a letter from the Chairman of the International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications asking ITU to take into account their common position on privacy and location information in mobile communication services adopted at the group's 29th meeting in February 2001 in Bangalore (India).

Market for location-based services

Location-based services represent a major market opportunity for mobile communi cations, particularly for IMT-2000 systems. Market projections (Ovum Research) indicate that by 2005, some 55 per cent of the cellular subscribers will subscribe to location-based services and will generate revenues in the order of USD 20 billion worldwide. Another study (Allied Business Intelligence) predicts that worldwide location-based service revenues will grow from some USD 1 billion in 2000 to over 40 billion in 2006.

But what are these location-based services? Within the context of IMT-2000 standardization based on 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) Specifications*, they can be defined as value-added services (VAS), network enhancing services, emergency services and lawful intercept. This section of the article focuses on VAS, as the gains from internal network use of location information are difficult to assess and emergency services performance is measured in terms of human lives.

A number of market studies define location-based VAS as a business or consumer 3G service that enables users or machines to find other people, vehicles, resources, services or machines. It also enables others to find users, as well as enabling users to identify their own location via terminals or vehicles. The potential of location-based services to attract users lies in two things: personalization (making existing services more relevant for the user) and enabling completely new services.

A study commissioned by the MUTTS Forum estimates the total location-based VAS revenue to be in the order of USD 10 billion by 2010 for 3G operators alone, with North America providing the greatest revenue opportunity. These findings were released in April 2001 in a report entitled The MUTTS Third Generation Market — Phase II: Structuring the Service Revenue Opportunities (www.umts-forum.org/reports/report13.pdf). Whatever study one endorses, there is a general consensus that a huge opportunity is up for grabs (see Figures 1 and 2).

Location-based VAS also represent an exciting opportunity to forge strategic partnerships with content providers, wireless application service providers, and other third parties. Such partnerships may open up entirely new revenue opportunities not yet envisioned by the market.

Some analysts see location-based services as a service enabler, rather than a service which will provide tremendous amounts of direct revenue. For example, adding location awareness to services such as voice portals, short messaging service (SMS) or mobile games potentially increases their value without necessarily impacting network infrastructure, user interfaces, or tariffs. In this sense, location awareness increases the value of wireless-based services in a way that is meaningful for mobile devices. Rich services are to replace rich content: relevant information would be valued more highly by mobile users than less relevant full multimedia (colourful graphics) content. By enabling richer services, location-based services will take the wireless content industry one step closer to mass market and ultimately, to profits. Intelligent agents based on XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) Web content are seen as another important step in that direction.

 

* Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is a standardization initiative made up of China Wireless Telecommunication Standard Group (CWTS), the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB), and the Telecommunications Technology Committee (TTC) of Japan, the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) of the Republic of Korea, the Standards Committee T1 of the United States and the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI). The reference made here is to the "Location Services Stage 1 Specification TS 22.071" (www.3gpp.org). A complementary industry group, known as 3GPP2, is made up of CWTS, ARIB, TTC, TTA, T1 and the Telecommunication Industry Association (TIA) of the United States (www.3gpp2.org).

Source: Ovum Research.

Source: UMTS Forum and Telecompetition Inc., July 2000.

Source: Nokia.

Wireless location technologies

Currently, every location solution is based upon a different, mostly proprietary location technology. This makes it extremely difficult for network operators and other companies looking to invest in location-based services to decide between all non-standardized systems. There is an obvious need for standardization in this area so that economies of scale can be realized in integrating location and positioning technologies into mobile handsets and infrastructure.

Basic approaches in location technologies

Cell or sector ID. The position of a wireless device is estimated using the information on the serving base station or sector. This can be enhanced with signal strength or timing information.

Triangulation. A call to a wireless device is picked up by a number of base stations. Different techniques are used, for example, angle-of-arrival (AOA), time difference-of-arrival (TDOA), and enhanced-observed time difference (E-OTD).

GPS chipset in the phone. The position of a wireless device is estimated by measuring distance from the visible satellites to the receiver by determining the pseudo ranges (code phases); extracting the time of arrival of the signal from the contents of the message transmitted by satellite; computing the position of the satellites by evaluating the ephemeris data at the indicated time of arrival; and calculating the position of the receiving antenna and the clock bias of the receiver by using the above data items. This technique is limited by the need for line-of-sight to the satellites and does not work well unassisted inside cars or in buildings.

Combination of techniques. These are techniques (see Figure 3) which, among other things, augment a GPS signal, add signal-strength or timing advance/round trip time (TA/RTT).

There is no technology that performs optimally in all environments or serves all terminals. Thus, operators will be forced to combine technologies, in many cases, across second and third generation networks in order to offer ideally, common look-and-feel location-based VAS and achieve mass market.

IMT-2000 standardization

Location capability requirements exist for IMT-2000 and are described in the service and capability Recom mendations of the ITU–R M series and ITU–T Q.1700 series. The mobile industry has been emphasizing the need for common global standards for location-based services. It seems necessary to consider how to coordinate the various bodies involved in the standardization of these services, namely: ITU, the 3GPPs, LIF and OGC. In order to achieve tangible results, a consensus is necessary on the role each body will play in this area.

Already, detailed standardization for location-based service specifi cations is being carried out in the 3GPPs. In particular, the 3GPPs are each defining network interfaces and other related technical standards for location-based services. There is a potential role for ITU to promote the harmonization of various approaches, the convergence of technologies (especially on an "all-IP" network) and to make global the appropriate national or regional specifications.

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