GSM lags behind in location-based services.LOCATION-BASED SERVICES (LBSs), applications that take advantage of GPS capabilities on mobile phones, have been available on mobile phones for a couple of years, but the GSM camp has yet to move beyond basic E911 capabilities mandated by the FCC (1) (Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC, www.fcc.gov) The U.S. government agency that regulates interstate and international communications including wire, cable, radio, TV and satellite. The FCC was created under the U.S. . Meanwhile, CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) A method for transmitting simultaneous signals over a shared portion of the spectrum. The foremost application of CDMA is the digital cellular phone technology from QUALCOMM that operates in the 800 MHz band and 1.9 GHz PCS band. mobile service providers, with the help of Qualcomm, have already integrated GPS functionality into their services. CDMA operators such as SK Telecom in Korea and KDDI in Japan offer LBSs, giving them increased average revenue per user (ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) A calculation often used to determine the overall value of an application. It is also used to rate particular customers, especially in the wireless space, by comparing someone's account to the overall average. ) and market share. Nextel in the U.S., with its proprietary iDEN handsets, offers navigation as well as asset and employee logistics to its enterprise customers. Nextel has the highest ARPU of all the U.S. mobile service providers. By 2005, GSM mobile service providers must have LBS (Location-Based Services) See mobile positioning. in their strategic plan or they will find themselves at a disadvantage, according to ABI Abi (ā`bī) [short for Abijah], in the Bible, King Hezekiah's mother. (Application Binary Interface) A specification for a specific hardware platform combined with the operating system. Research's principal analyst of semiconductor research, Alan Varghese. lie believes that while the GSM operators settled for less accurate network positioning solutions in order to meet FCC E911 requirements, they better not wait much longer to mandate GPS in the handset, or they'll find themselves "lost" as far as location-based services are concerned. |
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