It's only one facet of the whole. That's not the message at all. Laptop users outfitted with a mobile modem can already do on the road everything they can in the office, albeit much more slowly. But such users won't be the mass market, he said. Of particular interest, Knorr said, are services that are tailored to a user's specific location, such as tourist information, traffic reports, and taxi dispatch.
Various technologies allow service providers to pinpoint a mobile telephone.
Of these, he said, GPS is the most accurate, but is expensive and requires a bulky and power-hungry device at the end point, so it's most suited to professionals and for use in cars. In the U.S., wireless providers are building E-OTD infrastructure in order to meet U.S. Federal Communications Commission requirements that users can be located when they dial the 911 emergency number. But the high cost makes it unattractive to most European service providers, he said. For about a year, Alcatel has been using this location system in France, he said. He showed a reporter a Paris traffic service provided in partnership with Webraska Mobile Technologies SA, which offers users information on traffic jams near their current location.