Getting Tracked Down by Your Mobile--2003 article.

[link to web.archive.org]

23 June, 2003, UK


Being tracked down by your mobile

By Mark Ward
BBC News Online technology correspondent

Location-bases services look set to take-off
Carrying a mobile phone? Then someone could be tracking your every movement and know where you are. Big Brother? Perhaps, but it could just be a Mexican restaurant wanting to invite you in for dinner.
Your mobile phone says a lot about you.

The type of handset you own, the fascia you choose for it, the ringtone, even how quickly you answer it are good clues to how you think of yourself.

But soon your mobile phone could be saying a lot more about you and your lifestyle as handsets evolve into devices that know where they are and share this information with almost anyone that wants to know it.

"All the big four operators now offer a commercial service so you can send them a telephone number and they will tell you where it is," said Colin Bates, chief technology officer at location services company Mobile Commerce.

Finding phones

For years many companies have dreamed of using handset location as the basis for a range of services that let you know such things as the position of the nearest cashpoint, pub or Mexican restaurant.

Before now network operators have offered these services to their own subscribers and few others.

But location-based services are going to be much more common, now that locations can be requested for a few pence a time and firms such as Mobile Commerce and Verilocation are springing up to funnel location requests to the various networks.

The location system works best in urban areas covered by lots of base stations that have overlapping coverage. This lets operators give a location fix accurate to about 200 metres.


Already location maps are pretty accurate
In rural areas the accuracy worsens because there are fewer base stations to use as a guide to a handset´s location.

cont'd.
[link to web.archive.org]