AT&T Wireless Helps Callers Find Friends

Some AT&T Wireless Services customers will be able to find out where their friends are without asking them, using a service the mobile operator added to its mMode service on Tuesday.

The Find Friends service enables one mMode customer's phone to retrieve information on the location of another customer's phone, according to Mark Strassman, vice president of product development at Kivera, which created the technology that powers Find Friends.

That customer must have previously consented to being tracked and can opt out at any time. Whenever a user is tracked, that user gets an SMS message as notification.

The service takes advantage of location information that AT&T Wireless normally collects via its network of cells, eliminating the need for a geographic positioning system in every handset. All that is needed to take advantage of this service is a phone with General Packet Radio Service capability. GPRS is the high-speed wireless data system over which mMode services are carried.

Cutting Costs

Removing the need for a GPS could lower a cost barrier to location-based services, says Larry Hawes, an analyst at Delphi Consulting Group, in Boston. The same approach can be used by shipping companies, he says.

"If you give every truck driver a cell phone, that's a lot cheaper alternative, and you still know where they are," Hawes says.

The user's location usually will appear in the form of a street address, but if there is no nearby street address it can appear as an intersection, as the nearest freeway exit or as the distance from the nearest landmark with a name, according to Kivera's Strassman. After two friends or associates have located each other, they can use the service to find a convenient place to meet and get directions to that site.

Users can initiate a search through menus on the cell phone and can easily add or subtract names from the group that can track them, according to Jacob Feinstein, director of product management at AT&T Wireless, which is based in Redmond, Washington. Picking the menu choice for going "invisible" cuts off the whole group from being able to track the user. That feature cannot be overridden by parents or others, Feinstein says.

Location, Location

AT&T is leveraging Kivera Location Engine software, which is already being used by customers including the American Automobile Association and Cross Country Auto Services, which provides roadside assistance services for auto makers. Oakland, California-based Kivera's software lets service providers combine information from several different location databases, such as a map from one vendor and the locations of a chain of stores from a retailer.

Despite the availability of the "invisible" setting, the Find Friends service is likely to set off alarms over privacy, Hawes says.

"Will people understand that they can turn this thing off?" Hawes asks rhetorically. "It's a bit Big Brother-ish, so people have a bad reaction to that." The same is true of any service that uses presence information, he adds.

Find Friends is available to all mMode users at no extra charge. The mMode service is priced starting at $2.99 on top of a customer's AT&T Wireless service charge.

Find Friends is offered in all markets where mMode is now available. The approximately 15 markets include Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, San Diego, and Miami. AT&T Wireless plans to roll out mMode to all its coverage areas across the country by the end of this year, Feinstein says.