Mobile location from the major US networks is a game changer

A US-based company called LOC-AID claims that mobile location is undergoing a game-change – wireless carriers have decided to get in the game. They’re opening their core location information to developers, allowing third parties to build carrier location into their services. And LOC-AID is the gateway to that information – it’s a single source of location information from every major American carrier, making the location of over 300 million wireless subscribers in North American and Mexico. We talked to Rip Gerber, President & CEO of LOC-AID Technologies, to get a better idea of how it works.

How does it work?

LOC-AID allows businesses and developers to access the location information that each major US operator has for its subscribers – as in the example of the traffic service from Verizon and Airsage from earlier this year. This is entirely opt-in – an operator isn’t allowed to divulge that information without the permission of the customer. But once permission is given, location and demographic data from the core network can be wielded with great precision. LOC-AID can tell you how many soccer moms are in a traffic pattern. Or how many of your customers are standing outside your store. Or whether or not you are nearby when your card is swiped at a store.

LOC-AID is an independent company. It started as a developer for social applications and family finder apps, but found that relying on satellites and GPS for location didn’t really work – you can’t guarantee 100% coverage; it doesn’t work if you’re inside; and it murders your battery life. So it started building network connections. They’ve sunk over $10 million into creating a carrier-grade platform that connects into the location core from every operator on board.

For developers and enterprises, the way it works is this: if they have a customer who has agreed to provide their location, simply sending that customers phone number to LOC-AID is enough to get an accurate location. LOC-AID sends back latitude/longitude co-ordinates… or a map, or a geo-fence.

LOC-AID is pushing to sign major enterprises and businesses – like Bank of America, Coca-Cola or Disney, who have massive customer databases. While the company doesn’t object to smaller or “bedroom” developers, there is a problem centered around scale. In order to allow a company to start using their service, LOC-AID first has to get that company certified with every single operator on their platform. It’s a lengthy process, because the operators are naturally wary of handing out core network info to just anyone. In order to justify spending that amount of time, the company has to be capable of handling a large number of location transactions.

But without doubt, the major focus of LOC-AIDs efforts is large companies. As an example, it is really stressing the use case for fraud prevention for major financial institutions. According to them, US banks make over 28 million verification calls to prevent credit card fraud. Each call costs the bank approximately $15. But to ping that phone through network location (to ensure that the phone owner is in the same location as the credit card being used), costs only 5c.

What’s new?

LOC-AID recently announced that Verizon had signed with them, adding 92 million subscribers to the network. Their big news this week is that AT&T has also been signed to the network, with another 90 million subs. And Sprint is already signed to the platform. I wonder who could be next?

What we think?

Mobile location has been the “next killer app” or “the next disruptive technology” for a long time now. This year we’ve really begun to see it taking center stage in mobile. Applications like FourSquare, and the recently launched shopping services from shopkick, have been gaining a lot of attention. Is this as accurate as GPS? No, unfortunately. It isn’t as granular – but cell tower triangulation can give you a pretty definite area without needing to know where you are within 30 inches. It can still be used perfectly well for many large-scale enterprise functions like geo-fences (for retailers) and fraud prevention (for banks and financial institutions). For services like shopkick, that need to know when you’re actually in the store, LOC-AID probably won’t be accurate enough. But the advantages to the service are pretty substantial:

• It has unparallelled coverage
• It doesn’t affect battery life
• Without the need for GPS or apps, it will work on feature phones as well as smartphones. It can pick up ANY device.

However, the company doesn’t just use network functions. It also uses GPS and Wi-Fi, so that if someone needs a more precise lock on a user they can get it. They sent along a helpful little graphic showing the different ranges and suggested uses for the different location technologies: