• AT&T Location Information Services empowers you to build applications that could technically access location information of more than 300 million wireless subscriber devices across the major carriers in the United States & Canada.
• Since the services of the carrier network are used in determining the location of the subscriber device, there is no need for a handset-based application to be resident on the device which reduces the complexity of testing the location application with multiple devices and operating systems. It also eliminates the need of any application client to be present or to be downloaded on the device itself.
• AT&T Location Information Services vendors provide extensive subscriber privacy/consent management guidance to help build location based applications compliant with the CTIA guidelines for managing Location-based Services privacy.
• Provides the ability to your application to obtain real time location information of a device, even when the device is located indoors without line of sight to satellites.
• Empowers your application to obtain the location information of smartphone and feature phones even though the device may not include an embedded GPS chip.
• Provides the ability to choose different location technologies per location request based on the needs of your application in balancing the accuracy versus the response time. Your application could inform its preference to the platform to use one of the supported technologies based on its priority on one over the other by providing appropriate combination of input parameter values on the request.
  • Assisted GPS (A-GPS) – more accurate with relatively higher response latency
  • Enhanced Cell ID (ECID) – closer to the accuracy level of AGPS in urban areas with relatively lesser response latency
  • Cell ID (CID) – less accurate with relatively much less response latency and works with almost all wireless devices on all conditions – be it a smart phone or not – be it an indoor or outdoor - be it a urban or rural area
• AT&T Location Information Services doesn’t require any additional usage of battery power on the device when compared to the significant consumption of battery power by device resident applications obtaining the location of the device through GPS chip.
• Supports location requests for both GSM and CDMA based devices.
• AT&T Location Information Services provides additional geo-service APIs for map rendering, geo-coding and reverse geo-coding, geo-fencing, and point-of-interest (POI) searching, if you need to graphically display locations.
• Offers optional cross-carrier SMS messaging service to enable location-aware alerts such as emergency notification or proximity marketing offers, exchange general enterprise content with employees or customers, and support privacy management actions such as user authorization for use of their location information.
• Provides access to comprehensive usage reports that provides an ability to analyze the Location information and SMS usage detail across multiple carriers that is provided through a highly secure portal and also analyze the location accuracies returned, peak periods, etc.
• Some of the sample application areas that could use the location information for better productivity are listed below to kindle your ideas for building great applications using the location information.
  • Roadside assistance call centers can instantly identify a stranded motorist's location with information from their wireless phone, saving precious time, providing a faster response, and assuring the customer that help is on the way.
  • Credit card issuers can combat fraud by seeing if a cardholder's wireless device is in the same location as a questionable point-of-sale transaction.
  • Fleet operators, carriers, and other transportation companies can efficiently monitor drivers' locations in real time, as frequently as they want, with no driver interaction required.
• AT&T Location Information Services offers one contract –with one convenient monthly payment – provides a single, integrated service offering multi-carrier location acquisition capability through one of our location vendor relationships and customer support.

The capabilities and features mentioned here are available on the production environment and many or most may not be offered in the Product Trial Environment, when available.