Position Paper

Position Paper CMG

For the W3C & WAP-forum workshop on

Location Dependent Information Services

Sophia Antipolis, FR, February 15/16, 2000

Author: Joop Trouwee, CMG Telecom Products

Introduction CMG

CMG Telecom Products provides a range of products in the field of mobile messaging and mobile internet to mobile network operators. In relation to the workshop, the Mobile E-Mail and WAP Service Broker products are relevant, as well as the Location Dependent (WAP) Services CMG develops.

CMG Position

In the light of the development of current and future products, CMG is very much interested in making location dependent (WAP) services a success. It is the view of CMG that the workshop should put attention to the following topics:

Architecture of solutions.

When talking about syntaxes, semantics and interfaces, the underlying model and architecture must be clear first. Differences occur in who is the owner of the location information (operator, subscriber, corporate user, world, etc.) each leading to different models, attributes and privacy aspects.

Location parameters

It is important to work on the attributes of a Location, aiming at standardization. The discussion shall not be limited to syntax and semantics of an actual position, but classification of parameters in requests and answers is necessary. Such as:

Classes of precision (ranges)
Precision dependent on location. When for instance a "nearby ATM" is requested, the required precision in a city center differs from the required precision in a rural area, in order to provide an equal number of ATM locations.
Categories of location: zipcode (note that precision differs per country), streetname, city center, county, province, parking area, road crossing, home zone, work zone, etc.

Classification of Privacy

We should work on the rules that apply to classes of privacy or authorization, regarding knowledge of the location of a mobile station. Examples of privacy authorization classes are:

Emergency authority
User authorization. Explicitly made in advance, for all or named applications
Police tracking
Corporate user
User initiated service i.e. implicit authorization for that service, for a limited time
Dereferenced (i.e. without the MSISDN attached to the request, either or not with a temporary alias (e.g. to follow an unknown subscriber for statistical purposes)

Further it is important to address the validity time of a certain authorization. In this respect, it might be allowed to know a location only when it is not actual anymore.