A “completely network based
localization approach” has the following problem issues:
·
Privacy and so the related security and safety of the end user are endangered.
Although the mobile service providers would undersign a privacy agreement with
the end user, the most sensitive location information of the end user will
still be given to 3rd parties without prior knowledge of the end
user. The sensitive position knowledge obtained from such a system will be
transported to other mobile networks where the reliability/validity of the
privacy agreements are questionable. One time allowance (signature) to such a
sensitive information of a person to others is not practical, as people change
their minds very often. A messaging system, to ask for allowance, each time an
access is required, is not practical, in terms of operation, i.e. people do not
want to be forced to make decisions hundreds of times a day! So there is a
really serious privacy, security even freedom issue. A completely network
based localization system is in reality
a “network person tracking system”.
·
The Accuracy of localization depends on the limited information
triggered & received from the mobile phone. Not all the measurements made
by the mobile telephones are delivered to the network. That is why the network
calculated localization value is poor.
·
The Network is not able to receive continuous information about the
position of the mobile phones. This in turn disables a possibility to give a
full navigational service to the mobile phone.
·
The Localization process is complicated, since a limited amount of
information is received from mobile phones and/or information reception depends
on synchronisation of several GSM/UMTS antenna elements. This also creates an
extra difficulty that the same network localization system is not applicable
within every area or country.
·
The End user access to location based information, i.e. LBS, is not
always possible, i.e. not possible at places where access to the location
server (keeping the most sensitive user location information) is blocked.
·
The End user access to location based information is very slow. As most
end users have experienced through WAP, access takes a lot of time not only
because of low communication speeds, but also will be due to small screen of
mobile phones and also due to delays in getting the location information of the
person from a network database.
·
The End user access to location based information is very expensive, for
both the network provision and for the end user, as it involves individual
accesses to location server, and then to internet for related information, and
the delivery of the information is also done individually.
·
Geographical location of the end user is considered to be kept in a
“common database”, accessible by others, to be able to deliver the end users
“location based services”. This will also give many X-companies a great
opportunity to deliver location dependent disturbing PUSH services &
information to the mobile phones.
·
Internet access to location server interface is difficult to maintain,
in terms of possible existence of different location servers, different access rights and many updates of
such in terms of maintenance.
MobiLoTech’s approach to LBS is to
provide solutions that are end user oriented, i.e. mobile based localization.
Mobile phone device calculates the position of the device itself without
directly involving the network. The position calculation and the actual
translation to geographical text, map, position markings are all done at the
mobile device. This approach eliminates all the problems described for
“completely network based localization”.