Location Technologies Primer The rise of the mobile device is upon us, even if it’s arriving a little late to the U.S. The reason why mobile devices will become so important – they’ll help us (and our friends, and maybe everyone) know where we are at all times, driving social, advertising and other applications. Being location aware is the single most important feature in a mobile device that otherwise suffers in comparison with desktop and laptop Internet devices – terrible screen size and resolution, poor battery life, slow connectivity and less than satisfying data input choices. But being location aware more than makes up for those limitations. Other types of killer applications will also be built on the back of location aware technologies, and the advertising possibilities are substantial (care to stop by that Starbucks you are diving by for a free latte?). Eric Carr, the VP of Location Technologies at Loopt, is the guy we go to when we have questions about new location technologies. His post is below.
Nokia Siemens to Expand Apertio Beyond the HLR Putting the subscriber at the heart of a company’s strategy is a concept with the air of a public relations pitch. But when your job is managing subscriber data, like Apertio’s, the concept earns you 140 million Euros and the chance to expand your business beyond the Home Location Registry. Nokia Siemens Networks’ acquisition of Apertio closed last month and with it closed the book on certain aspects of the merged giant’s IMS portfolio; the company is standardizing on Apertio subscriber databases instead. With it, too, may close the book on the idea of standalone subscriber databases such as the Home Location Registry (HLR) and Home Subscriber Server (HSS). "Technology-wise, Apertio is more open and had advantages in time-to-market. What the NGN needs is databases with open architectures and interfaces that lead the industry not only into HLRs and HSSs, but into new areas of taking advantage of subscriber data, Clever says. So, too, is the competition.
Location management in GSM In today's digital cellular mobile radio networks, features like power control and handover are related to periodic measurements of level and quality at the mobile ( downlink/forward ) and at the base station ( uplink/reverse ) receiver. The measurements values and corresponding signaling events of all customer's calls in a specific cell under investigation could be observed by the network operator at the protocol interface between base station controller unit. Statistical evaluation of such mass data produced by customer calls and collected at the protocol interface is an important aid to optimize the base station subsystem parameters in an operating network. The almost only drawback is that there is no exact information available about the position of the mobile. From all these observations, location management plays an important role in GSM mobile system. Location management schemes are essentially based on users' mobility and incoming call rate characteristics. · Several VLRs.
Spatial Analysis of GSM Subscriber Call Data Records - Articles The most valuable asset of many companies is not their products or services, but their data. This is particularly true in the communications industry. Trapped inside the customer billing systems is a gold mine of data that holds the key to customer retention, reduced expenses, customer self-service and overall competitive advantage. In the mobile communications networks, the core business is selling airtime to subscribers. All the information about that airtime is tracked through call data records, or CDRs. GIS is one powerful tool that can be used to analyze CDRs, allowing the operators to see a precise, up-to-date picture of the entire network and to better understand the calling patterns of their subscribers, with a view to knowing their networks better and offering subscribers customized services, and hence increasing revenue. A CDR is generated at the switching center of a GSM network each time a successful call goes through. The data requirements for this analysis are as follows.
Mapping a New, Mobile Internet A nascent industry involving the likes of Google and Nokia is pinpointing the movements and behaviors of millions of cell-phone users Imagine that your business had a complete log of your customers' wanderings—every trip to the grocery store, every work commute, every walk with the dog. What could you learn about them? Armed with that knowledge, what sorts of goods and services might you try to sell them? On a snowy winter evening in New York's SoHo neighborhood, a small team of analysts at a startup called Sense Networks is poring over the movements of nearly 4 million cell-phone users over the course of a year. Much can be learned, it turns out, from the patterns of those dots moving across the maps. After a few weeks of monitoring one dot, the Sense computer usually has enough data to place it into a tribe—a group of people with common behaviors. With every step they take, the members of Sense's tribes are helping to create a new laboratory of humanity on the go.
Sense Networks David Petersen Chief Executive Officer As Chief Executive Officer, David Petersen is responsible for setting the vision and execution path of Sense Networks. Prior to joining Nielsen, Petersen served as Senior Vice President of Product Management and Senior Vice President of Business Development at Telephia — the global leader in mobile performance information for the telecommunications industry. Before joining Telephia, Petersen was a Senior Manager at BellSouth Telecommunications in the consumer finance and marketing organizations. Petersen holds a Master of Science in Finance from Georgia State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Washington and Lee University. Kevin Hannan Vice President, Product Management Kevin Hannan is a product and general management executive with 20 years in mobile, software and management consulting. Alex (Sandy) Pentland Chief Privacy Advocate and Co-Founder David Rosenberg Chief Scientist David Rosenstrauch Vice President, Engineering Mr.