These applications provide the locations of vehicles as well as data such as owner information, usage, billing information, vehicle ID and vehicle model number. Users access data via consoles and can view a display of vehicles on an electronic map. Users have the option of zooming, panning or highlighting a geographic area of interest for the included vehicles, then displaying various tabular data from the database and data mining the vehicles of interest. A two-way wireless network transmits the vehicle's location to a data center where it is correlated with street network data. Fleet managers receive map displays of each vehicle's location, speed and direction via the Internet, allowing them to monitor and communicate with drivers on the road.
Users can also add frequent destinations and other locations to the map displays.
The mandate, which requires partial implementation by 2001 and full compliance by 2002, was designed to ensure that 911 calls from cellular and wireless carriers would arrive at the 911 dispatch center with address information equivalent to that received on 911 calls made from standard wireline phones. The infrastructure and technology required to precisely locate a wireless caller is the same infrastructure and technology that wireless LBS providers use to deliver focused content and services based on the caller's location. Providing driving directions and location information via phone is one example of a wireless LBS application that is growing out of the FCC mandate. Other applications focus on PDAs to deliver mapping, navigation and vehicle-tracking services. For example, JungleSoft's JunglePort application allows users to download dynamic vector-based maps for any location in the United States.