Orange Launch Wireless Location Based Services

Orange announced its intention to launch new location based services, which will be available to more than 30 million customers across Europe. Orange customers will have access to a range of "intelligent" direction and finding services, giving them enhanced navigation and visually rich information about their local amenities including restaurants, cash machines and entertainment venues. The advanced suite of Orange location based services is due to be launched early in 2003.

Picture shows Richard Brennan, Executive Vice-President of OrangeWorld.

At the heart of the launch is a multi-million Euro deal between Orange and Webraska - one of the world's leading provider of location based services applications and platforms. The new partnership will allow Orange to offer its European customers a wide range of location based services via wap, web, text and advanced messaging. The three-and-a-half year deal will improve the experience of Orange customers using location based services. They will be able to view interactive map displays when requesting directions and access services including the Yellow Pages and "Buddy Finder" - which allows a customer to know where their friends are (so long as they have all signed up to the service). The agreement will also allow Orange to offer a range of new community-based and entertainment services to its customers.

Richard Brennan, Executive Vice-President of OrangeWorld and Brand said: "Orange customers have been able to access location based services for the past 12 months, and while many have enjoyed the benefits these services have offered, the actual customer experience needed to be improved. With the introduction of more powerful handsets with larger colour screens, we can deliver visually-rich services to the customer, enabling a significantly enhanced customer experience. Whether the customer is accessing these services via the web, wap, text or advanced messaging, they will benefit from intuitive driving directions and easy-to-access information that will guide them to their nearest petrol station, cinema or Italian restaurant. In fact whatever they want to find, their Orange phone will find it for them.

He added: "Location-based services are part of our core services strategy and combined with our messaging services, it will be even easier for Orange customers to stay in touch with their friends and family."

While the services will initially be available in the UK and France, it is intended to roll them out across all major European operations throughout next year. The Webraska deal has been structured to give other Orange group companies access to the Webraska-developed applications and join the platform cost-effectively, delivering a seamless experience for customers wherever they are in the world.
Orange operations will be able to choose from a portfolio of location based services including:

-- Finder Applications: Yellow Pages, Pubs, Cinemas, cash machines, Night Out, Parks and Attractions found by name or category
-- Navigation Applications: Driving Directions, Walking Directions, Maps and Traffic Alerts
-- Community Applications: BuddyFinder, m-Notes, m-Vite, allowing subscribers to be located or locate friends and colleagues near them, find out how far they are, their mood, if they are available, exchange SMS or emails, and share information

Orange is also focussed on customer safety, security and privacy. Customers will have to actively request to be located before using the service and will be able to block access to their location information at any time as well as create and manage their own lists of friends or colleagues.
Other key features which Orange intends to deliver within the next 12 to 18 months include:

-- Seamless language access - Because the Orange group has
selected the Webraska platform across all of its European
operations, customers will be able to read content in a number
of languages, regardless of the country they are in. For
instance, a French customer on a visit to London will be able
to access and view content in French.

-- Intelligent driving directions - The service employs "Enhanced
spatial searching" (ESS) capabilities to find the nearest
points of interest based on actual driving time. This means
that if there is a traffic jam on route to a chosen
restaurant, customers will be automatically informed and can
choose a different destination.

-- Interactive Games: customers will experience a new dimension
in games with multi-players, interactive and
location-sensitive games that could be played within a city, a
country or across Europe.

-- Community-based services: child finder, chat/dating
applications allowing customers to remain closer to their
family and friends.