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Location-based services "must obey Asimov's Laws"

Vodafone's advertising asks "How are you?" But what about "where are you?" Privacy appears to be a low-profile issue with phone users; but for mobile users, it will only remain so if messaging doesn't explode into spamming - and more importantly, if phone companies don't abuse their knowledge of "location"

Location-based services are the key of Webraska's software, which it sells to mobile phone operators. The name comes from an amalgam of "Web" with "the great outdoors" which were symbolised by Alaska and Nebrasks (apparently!) But although the "outdoor" image is key to its future, the company feels that it wants the limelight, not just the sunlight. It is a pioneer of the location-based mobile industry, but not known enough, it seems, to satisfy the Board.

The company is now driving around Europe, waking up analysts and press to its purposes; and alerting the market to what it perceives as a danger - a danger that people may not adopt location-based services if they perceive them as a threat.

"What we need, is a code of practice, something like Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics," says founder and CEO Jean-Michel Durocher.

"So the first law would be that location, through its availability or non availability, should not allow harm to humans. The second would that location should always be under control of subscriber - unless this contradicts Law One. And third, providers of location based services should be allowed to make viable income - unless it conflicts with Laws One and Two."

This would meet many of the issues that have arisen in discussions. "For example, the FCC in the US have said that all telcos must provide locate emergency location abilities for callers. But you must not provide that information to an aggressor. Second, privacy; you want to be able to deactivate it unless authorised, and nobody else should have access to it, and it shouldn't be stored- except, of course, where police request access for someone's location because of criminal pursuit. And finally, nobody should provide location-based services which make it impossible for those who make a living from them, to have a viable business model."

Naturally, Durocher believes he has a viable business model. "We have a three-layer product; first is Geospatial; everything to do with maps. Second is an application framework allowing various applications to share data; and third is a wide range of applications which can plug into and use the other two layers."

Maps involves the business of, computing routes, sending directions, translating position to addresses - and vice versa - and ranking locations. You rank them not only by distance, but by journey time, traffic problems. "We have these engines; they have been chosen by Nortel, Ericsson, IBM and by various other equipment manufacturers," says Durocher.

The second layer is an application framework "that makes it easy to develop and to launch new applications; and allows these apps to share information," Durocher said. "For us it's not only important to develop the killer app; but to develop the killer environment. We think we have this; it has one vital asset, the context sharing element."

Context sharing is allowing apps to share data between themselves. "You might want to find a restaurant, know where it is, get directions, from where you are, and send them to someone else; that may be three or more apps, one messaging, one mapping, one traffic, one restaurant guide. They have to share the same information."

The third element is the number of applications Webraska has. "We have something like 30 apps, ranging from "what is my nearest - whatever ... ?" to traffic services, car navigation - and available for PDAs and in-car equipment. We think that server-based, Internet applications will be very important. Get rid of big CD Rom for database, and share it with others. And other location based services like the buddy finder application, except that these applications share the other data; you can say "let's meet at a cinema which is convenient to both of us" to a friend.

Durocher believes he has a market-leading position. "We have the enabling application platform - few have that - plus many applications: there are, today, no other people with the whole solution," he believes. "There are some application providers with two or three applications - like Valis ; we have 15, but we do other things as well. Then you have car navigation solution. There are several others working like Motorola and TrafficMaster will use their technology; and Yeoman is doing similar; but again, we believe we have more of these early deployments, or trials, or decisions; also we have patents. Then if you look at enabling platforms; geospatial technologies, you have Mapinfo, for example, who have geospatial engines, but used for planning - roads, pipelines, network cell sites; they are desktop solutions to analyse data, not a service delivery mechanism. So scaling isn't there yet; even though they plan to enter into these areas. Today, if we look at how many telcos they have, then it is less than three or four or so - and we have a larger number of deployments."

Corporate bragging time: "The company; we are 140 people; created in 1998. We have merged with AirFlash, September last year. The two together, we believe, are now number one in location based services. We have 15 telco operators, 12 publicly known like Orange in UK, where we have launched WAP services for them, Viag (the subsidiary of mmo2 in Germany); ePlus with its i-mode operation in Germany; Telecom Italia, and so on. Three are not known yet. Five others are in trials now. And we're also in Hong Kong, Australia, and doing first China and US trials."

And revenues?

"We have received €19m of orders in the last 12 months; these are often for multi-year contracts; so about €5m for the year from April 2001 to March 2002. But these are real customer orders; so it's very good. Especially with the worries about whether telcos want to invest, or whether there are opportunities to generate revenues - and to both those questions, we think the answer is 'yes'."

Based on the users Webraska sees, an average telco with 10m subscribers will currently be pulling in €1.5 million in revenues. "Next year, it will be ten times that, just for location based services that our customers will buy. Over the next four years, the same telco can expect to earn € 150 million over that period, projected."

In the last two years, Webraska was in trial mode, and testing. "But our biggest customer - who is still under NDA - has 350,000 users already, using these location based services to generate a million pages; still small, but the trend is there - which justifies significant investment in infrastructure."

Summarising: "We think we are the number one player in this industry; we think we have to pre-empt the worries that are starting. When people can locate friends, it will be come a social topic; we should make sure our solutions and our customers are careful about what is being done with this."

Durocher is worth taking seriously. His track record, at Webraska, looks like a fairly typical marketing man's dream; but behind his undoubted marketing flair, is a deeply well-informed technical mind. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Science degree in Applied Mathematics from the Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal, Canada.

He founded Webraska in 1998, "with the goal of turning mobile terminals into global personal co-pilots," says his profile. Prior to founding Webraska,he did indeed work in marketing, as Marketing and Program Manager with Matra Communications - producers of ISDN terminals, videophones and facsimile machines - in France. But he's also held strategic technical posts; at Nortel Networks, Durocher was responsible for the company's Speech Technology Infrastructure. He also served as General Manager at Tektrend International - a developer and manufacturer of non-destructive evaluation (NDE) solutions.