Assessing the business impact of location based services

Location based services are a growth area for service providers looking to fulfil new customer needs, and network operators looking to augment their revenues. While the idea of using information about customer location to deliver focused services may be extremely appealing, there are significant risks and challenges to be faced. In addition to the technical hurdles, understanding and catering to customer experience is critical for success. In this paper, we describe developments in the area of LBS, and propose a model to address customer experience issues in this domain. In particular, we describe the types of revenue models and niche applications that might be profitably targeted by LBS providers.