Family Safety and Security Continues to be a Key LBS Application Area for Networks

The announcement this week of AT&T's FamilyMap family locator service underscores the realization on the part of network operators that having a comprehensive set of LBS offerings that address core subscriber concerns is critical to maintaining market share. The new application is identical to Sprint Family Locator in many respects, which is not surprising considering both services were developed with the same partner (Wavemarket). As with all current location based service applications, these family tracking/locating services work best on GPS-enabled handsets, If the device doesn’t contain a GPS chipset or is not in clear line of site of a satellite, the system automatically uses alternative (read network)  location technologies, and the accuracy falls to a few hundred yards or more. Both services offer schedule checks that allow parents to set a day and time to automatically locate a family member's phone. For example, a parent can set a schedule check for 4:00PM every weekday to make sure the child gets home from school as expected.. Each service will then locate the family member's phone and send the location via email or text message. Neither service supports prepaid phones. For security reasons, both applications send a text message to registered handsets when they become locatable. Stored location information is deleted periodically from the network server. Some slight differences relate to pricing. The Sprint application is available for a 15-day free trial, while the newer AT&T service offers a 30-day trial. After the free trial period, a monthly Family Locator subscription is five dollars to locate up to four phones, and a FamilyMap subscription is $9.99 to track up to 2 phones and $14.99 for up to 5 phones. While AT&T requires a data plan, Sprint does not. I expect future generations of family tracking/locating applications to be seamlessly integrated with other LBS services in a way that allows users/subscribers to select the service segments that are active ant any given time, but for now the Wavemarket-developed application remains a mainstream network offering in this area.