Many, many years when GPS (Global Positioning System) systems cost $25,000, I remember speaking with executives in the positioning industry, such as those at Trimble Navigation, predicting that GPS hardware eventually would decrease in price and size -- to $5,000 to be within the range of some businesses -- and, eventually, to the size of handheld systems.
Years ago that seemed like a long ways away. And it was!
But we're finally at the point where GPS has become a consumer-priced (and sized) device, and cellular phones are going to be a big part of the GPS ecosystem....eventually.
Good news, but...
The good news is the cellular industry has begun to incorporate GPS into many handsets. The bad news is the industry has been spending years wrestling with technical issues and -- at least as important -- financial issues -- about how to offer profitable location-based services.
The cellular operators have been ordered by the Federal Communications Commission to implement E911 service and there have been a lot of legal wrangling where the operators have been able to delay implementation.
Also, part of the blame for the delay needs to be placed upon the public safety organizations, some of which haven't sufficiently upgraded their equipment to work with E911. And, some states have taken funds allocated for E991 and used them for non-location purchases; that seems almost criminal to me.
Still, slowly, slowly...
Despite the years of delays we're finally at the point where GPS is ready for prime time consumer use. But we're still waiting for lots of location-based services and that's taking much longer than I had hoped.
Location and "presence" are big buzzwords in the Internet community and perhaps that will help spark additional wireless GPS services.
Wade Roush, a senior editor of Technology Review, wrote an article about taking two GPS-enabled cellular phones from Nextel for a test "drive" -- and test "walk" -- (see below) and compared them to his Garmin handheld GPS transceiver.
Good enough for consumers
His conclusion: The Garmin beats the Nextel Motorola phones for accuracy, the screen and functionality. "But for people who don't need to know their positions down to a thousandth of a minute, they're [the Nextel phones] just fine," he writes.
Roush picked Nextel because it's the only cellular operator in the United States that enables third party developers to access its GPS data. Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless do not, he says. That's not surprising because operators want to make as much money as they can and all too often that means not allowing other content providers access to customers with having first struck a deal with the operator.
The integration of location data with applications makes so much sense. It has been taking much too long for all of us in the U.S. to get location-enabled services.
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