Tata Indicom To Launch Location Based Services In Late 2008
If I were mean, I’d say that Tata Indicom’s idea of location based services (LBS) is probably a wireless data card connection that actually works. But I’m not, so I won’t say that. There’s news, however, from the telco on the LBS front – Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) has announced that Tata Teleservices will commercially deploy location based services on multiple handsets later this year. The LBS uses triangulation and satellite based GPS service. Unfortunately, there’s not much on which services will actually be launched, apart from the usual – consumer services like “friend finder” and social networking apps, as well as enterprise services like asset and fleet tracking. Tata Teleservices has a subscriber base of around 25 million.
This is the tenth time they are making this announcement. The costs for deploying a Qualcomm based LBS service is prohibitive and with no actual returns on this on the short term I am sure that they would end up as one of their many pipe dreams
Well, I think this is the first time that we've covered it. I'm not sure of how significant such a deployment will be with TTSL anyway, given that, from what I hear, it's mostly a low ARPU subscriber base.
Folks, probably we could seem Virgin using these service platform. TTSL might not have the right subscriber profile, but Virgin's positioning could gel well with savvy location applications. Also, LBS has a good potential in fleet / workfornce management applications. Would be good to see whether they can get the ecosystem right….