Logica Mobile Communications is a division of Logica PLC, a UK FTSE100 quoted software and services company based in the UK but with interests and divisions throughout the world. The Mobile Networks division concentrates on those technologies and applications which concern the mobile telecommunications and related fields. Logica products in this domain already deployed worldwide include the Aldiscon Short Message Service Centre (SMSC) family and the Aethos PrePaid Intelligent Network Platform (INP) both of which are among the most successful in their respective fields. The Logica WAP gateway is a new product which is intended to have the same impact on the WAP networks now being implemented by building on Logica’s skills in this field and demonstrated expertise in the technologies underlying WAP. In addition Logica is a leading supplier of Cell Broadcast Systems which allow the delivery of information, in user selectable categories, to be focused on unique geographical areas. In this respect, the Cell Broadcast Short Message Service (CBS) is similar to the Teletext service offered on some television systems insofar as it permits a number of unacknowledged general messages to be broadcast to all receivers within a particular region. The geographical elements of these products obviously intersect to some extent with those topics under discussing in this forum. Logica is also an active member of the WAP Forum.
Our specific interest in this field lies in the role of the WAP network or gateway to be able to provide and service the position data exchange to and from the handset. There are two main considerations when discussing the presentation of geographical data in the handset. The first is the data model itself which is used to represent the location in the most appropriate form for an application. The second is the location and form of this translation function or intelligence within the network.
The data model adopted should be flexible enough to represent a multitude of different perspectives on the location of a device. In most applications this may consist of a tree shaped hierarchy along the lines of street>district>city>region>country etc but there may well be circumstances where another form of hierarchy intersects this. Some applications may wish to utilise their own logical position descriptions, for instance supplying business related positioning versus tourist or leisure oriented or even more technical such as land-use or underlying geology etc. Thus the data model should contain components or qualifiers describing the nature of the position information as well as the actual information itself. The mapping of the raw position data as reported by the network to this logical information will take place in the translation function.
The translation function is a virtual function that exists within the network and which maps the basic position data to a form more appropriate to an application. This function may exist centrally in the network, or may be distributed with progressively more detailed information being held at a more local level. Indeed there may well be several layers of translation functions and the establishment of the most appropriate will be an important element of the position query mechanism. Although the primary translation database(s) may be held within an operator's network it is possible that third party commercial databases may also be queried for more specialist information and this is an aspect which should be considered. The routing of the position query to the appropriate database is an area which may fall under the control of a network element or the application itself, this is an area which needs exploration. It is important that this translation process is an open and widely adopted standard and a generally applicable resolution would be the most desirable and beneficial result to avoid the fragmentation that is currently present in the GPS world where each device uses it's own location databases and translations. Having a defined method of position translation would give a great boost to this whole area and open it up to new applications with minimum necessity for replication of the same or similar information in a variety or formats at a variety of locations.
Although the positional data model and translation function is considered an important area from our perspective, not least because it is the area which appears to be the most undefined at present, we also have an interest in the other aspects of this positional domain. The privacy and security aspects of the presentation of this information, both from a civil and commercial point of view is likely to be an area in which we will be concerned and which our products may well have a role to play. In addition we also are extremely interested in the lower levels relating to the transmission of this information and the underlying methods and interoperability considerations involved. These are areas which are our strengths and ones in we have a wealth of expertise which has underpinned our development in the past and which will significantly impact our future offerings in this field.