MalaysiaGIS.com

Source: The Star

Ahead Mobile Sdn Bhd also hopes to sign up the other two local mobile operators Celcom and DiGi, and was also negotiating deals with operators in Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia.

"So far, Friend Finder only works between Maxis 012 and 017 prepaid and postpaid subscribers," said company director Wong Tze Leng.

"However our location-based services can interoperate across multiple networks, both locally and overseas, if more operators were to offer them," said Wong, who is also chief executive officer (CEO) of Unified Communications Sdn Bhd.

Ahead Mobile Sdn Bhd is a joint venture between local company Unified Communications (www.unifiedcomms.com) and South Korea's Ahead Mobile Inc (www.aheadmobile.com).

Both companies invested up to RM2mil in hardware, software, office space, datacentre fees and travelling expenses in establishing the Malaysia joint-venture and in developing Friend Finder.

They hoped to recoup this investment from the 20,000 location-based transactions expected per day through a revenue-sharing agreement with Maxis.

However, with no hard figures on transaction volumes so far, company officials would only report an "encouraging" number of transactions daily.

CEO and director Lee Yang Dong wants to leverage on Unified's experience in connecting applications to GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) networks and have Ahead Mobile Sdn Bhd export its location-based services throughout Asia, where GSM systems are predominant.

Ahead Mobile Sdn Bhd (www.aheadmobile.com.my) also welcomes third-party developers to work with it in developing location-based applications that work with its system.

"Such developers sometimes have the industry-specific knowledge to develop more comprehensive applications that we would be able to," said Wong.

Getting ahead
Friend Finder allows Maxis subscribers to track, via SMS (short message service), the location of their loved ones, family members, friends, or anyone they know as long as permission has been granted from that individual.

It is actually that individual's cellphone GSM SIM card that is tracked. If subscribers prefer not to disclose their location, they can simply disable the location-tracking service.

Maxis will charge the tracker 30sen per SMS returned by the system with the location. Under their revenue-sharing scheme, Ahead Mobile Sdn Bhd gets 70% (21 sen) while Maxis keeps the remaining nine sen, plus the 15 sen it charges the tracker for his initial SMS requesting a location.

Friend Finder can only track the location with an accuracy dependent on the area with an accuracy dependent on the area covered by the Maxis base station hosting the target's phone at that particular time. Thus in urban areas, this could be anywhere from 50m to 500m.

Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking is usually accurate to within 15m to 20m. However, while the satellite-based GPS can only track people outdoors in clear view of at least five satellites, Friend Finder can track people in buildings, in underground car parks or trains, as long as they are within the mobile network's coverage.

"We can be more accurate with terrestrial mobile networks if they supported triangulation," said Wong.

With triangulation, the network determines a person's location by his phone's position relative to three of its base stations, in much the same why how GPS determines a person's position relative to the known positions of satellites above.

Such triangulation would however require additional investment in the network which operators perhaps cannot justify until they see substantial revenue coming from the service.

Ahead Mobile Sdn Bhd plans to also support GPS, especially since more phones in the future are expected to include such capability.

Tracking kids, and more
The company also plans to roll out its Family Care, Lover Care, LB-Dating (location-based dating), Where Is My Phone and Worker Finder location-based services by the middle of the year.

In addition to SMS, these will also be accessible through Java, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and Web-based interfaces to serve different purposes.

A person being tracked by Friend Finder may refuse to disclose his location, but "while that's fine between friends and acquaintances, it's not acceptable when a child prevents his parents from monitoring his whereabouts," said Lee.

"Family Care gives parents more control," he added.

Worker Finder are for employers who may need to locate staff in the field. It's web-enabled since it wouimpracticalatical for, as an example, a fleet operator to request the whereabouts of each of its 50 van drivers, one at a time, using SMS.

"So instead, the manager can log onto a website and view the location of all 50 drivers, at once," said Lee.

Where Is My Phone, which helps you find your cellphone, is also web-enabled. "If you've misplaced your phone, you can't use it to find out where it is, so Where Is My Phone lets you log onto a website and locate your phone," he added.

Before year-end, Ahead Mobile Sdn Bhd expects to launch a Java, WAP or web-enabled version of Friend Finder, which would allow trackers to obtain locations using their PC's web browser, their phone's WAP browser, or through a Java applet running on their phone.

The company also plans to roll out Messenger Friend Finder (operating over Microsoft's MSN and the Yahoo Messenger networks), and location-based business applications like fraud detection and location-based marketing.

"When integrated with a mobile operator's network and a credit card company's system, our location-based services can alert a subscriber of suspended fraud if his credit card is swiped in Mont' Kiara when he's actually in Subang Jaya, for example," said Wong.

With location-based marketing, a retailer system can automatically alert subscribers about special offers, products they like, and so on, by SMS whenever they're in the vicinity of the retailer's outlets.

Ahead Mobile Sdn Bhd can be reached at (03) 2087 9288; details of Friend Finder are available on the Maxis Hotlink website at www.hotlink.com.my/level2/hotlevel2.asp?AID=2103