Back in 2004 I signed with AT&T Wireless with an unlimited data plan. Upon my searches for what else I could spend my money on I was surfing AT&T’s WAP network that was then called MMode. I noticed they had a free service that let you in about 10 clicks of “Are you sure? Y/N” and “Do you agree? Y/N” do a local business search based on your phones location. I was curious as to how this was accomplished. I was guessing that the WAP site somehow requested a cell tower # from the provider somehow and based the search on that, but it turned out I was wrong. The WAP site used something called Location Based Services to query my cell sites to actually triangulate my phone based on aGPS data (the neutered GPS used for E911 services), and the WAP site simply received a lat/lon value for my phone that was apparently accurate up to 10m. resolution (I’m working from memory here, so I might get some things wrong). LBS also allowed to query a buildin GPS unit as well as simply identify a cell site and use that. Then AT&T became Cingular and this stopped working on MMode.
Fast-forward to today. I am on T-Mobile and again have an unlimited data plan, but apparently the only provider offering aGPS based LBS ANYTHING is Verizon. Nextel and Boost offer phones with built-in GPS and my phone can connect to a bluetooth GPS device, but that’s not impressive. The phone already has aGPS and LBS support, and damn it but I’ve used it before for location (for free, mind you) so don’t tell me it’s impossible! What the hell? Two and a half years pass and the GSM network around me with most providers pretty much sharing towers anyway has lost features? So who is being the idiot here who’s holding this back? Providers, waiting to find a way to capitalize on it? Software/WAP vendors who don’t know this is possible so keep writing phone software that relies on actual GPS units? Am I simply using wrong terms to look for this and it’s widely available under some different name?
I mean, Cingular OWNS whatever magic AT&T used to make a regular WML WAP site aware of your longitude and latitude through aGPS, and two and a half years later they’re not offering anything? Is this a conspiracy to sell expensive-ass phones with TWO GPS chips (aGPS + Full GPS)?
Gah, I’m going to stop typing before this turns into a pit thread, but seriously, what the hell?
- Groman
P.S. And I don’t really care about paranoia of location targetted ads. I for one, want to be able to set location based ToDo items that ring an alarm when I’m in the vicinity of <blank>! Ads can be dealt with once they exist, first give me the damn features!