A Geolocation API, Fernando Mendioroz, CTO at PAiC Business Development
I’ve known Fernando Mendioroz for many years. We ran TADHack Uruguay together back in 2016. There I discovered Uruguayan Tanat wine, it well worth trying, but focusing on the presentation at hand 🙂
Fernando provides a quick review of the products available from PAiC Business Development: Extended Signaling Gateway, Extended GMLC (Gateway Mobile Location Centre, and the focus of this presentation), Extended DRA (Diameter Routing Agent), mCommerce platform, Extended SDP (Service Delivery Platform, and part of the demo given), Extended SMSC, Extended USSD gateway, and lots of custom services and integrations.
The nice thing with a GMLC is it aggregates location information from multiple sources, it’s not limited to only GPS, it can gather data from indoors and underground where GPS struggles. Plus for IoT devices that often do not have GPS, it can use the mobile network. The PAiC extended GMLC has some excellent extensions to gather an unmatched set of location related information.
Fernando then goes into a extensive list of use cases carriers can consider, many of which significantly benefit from the extended GMLC’s capabilities. He shows the detailed signalling flows for an interesting 911 use cases, which wraps up with a live demo. Well done Fernando!
Slideshare is having difficulties today, here’s a direct link to Fernando’s slides.
Agenda Description
A Geolocation API for real-time, transparent interaction with mobile networks for gathering of location information under any generation of cellular radio access networks.
Independent of core or radio access network, device hardware or software, operational in low-grade network conditions such as underground or indoor environments.
- Mobile location information can be retrieved autonomously or triggered by asynchronous events from messaging services such as SMS or USSD, voice, etc., independently of underlying network infrastructure.
- Allows service providers to integrate universal location data to any other IoT application, triggering actions and responses from other networked devices and communication channels such as voice and messaging.
- Processes location reports upon entry, stay or exit of tracked device from predefined zones, motion events when devices approach zones within a predefined distance, periodic events/timeouts, user equipment availability, emergency calls, etc.
- Out-of-the-box location retrieval with SS7 and Diameter-based interfaces in LTE.
- Use cases:
- e-Health: currently used on covid-19 patients tracking, iWatch cardio activity alarm (2015 TADHack Chicago winner)
- Emergency services (2017 TADHack Global winners)
- Security services
- Fleet/Workforce Management
- Road Traffic Control & Planning
- Mobile marketing/sales based on proximity
- Environmental warnings
- Court restraining policing
- Next steps: Secure User-Plane location, 5G location through HTTP2, Geolocation as a Service.
Thank you, Fernando, for an excellent review of your extended GMLC (Gateway Mobile Location Centre). Should telcos focus on promoting the location API to partners, or on developing specific location enabled services?
Thanks Alan, great question. They could actually go for either choice, it’s up to them and both are valid depending on their business models. From our experience, what is happening more often is the first choice (promoting the location API to partners). We aim to become one of those partners globally and offer Geolocation as a Service (let’s baptize it as GLaaS).
In any way, our Geolocation API provides the MNOs a way to grasp more control over the location-based services supply chain, as it leverages channels that MNOs are very likely not using at their full potential, giving them the ability to enhance/monetize services over USSD, SMS and voice with geolocation. Furthermore, slide 23 of the presentation contains some use cases of a specific MNO that contacted us recently.
Hope it answers your question and thanks again.