Subject: [NEXTEL-1] In wireless, safety services could be underrated opportunity

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Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2002 16:53:15 -0500

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In wireless, safety services could be underrated opportunity

Source: Associated Press

Publication date: 2002-11-08

NEW YORK (AP) -- Chris Coles has a plan to make you safer and
give the wireless industry a jolt.

With digital cameras and global-positioning chips increasingly
being included in new mobile phones, the 58-year-old British
entrepreneur wants to set up a nationwide personal security service
that would put the pictures and homing functions to good use.

Whenever subscribers to the service needed help, got scared or
wanted advice that the authorities couldn't be bothered to
dispense, their cell phones could assist.

The handsets could transmit pictures and a user's coordinates to
the security service, or get a trustworthy human voice on the line.

Say subscribers got lost in an unfamiliar city and were afraid
they had wandered into an unsafe neighborhood. A dispatcher could
use their coordinates and photos from the phone to offer guidance.

Members who used their camera-phones to snap pictures of
suspicious-looking characters could also help deter crime.

Coles, who calls his idea ``the best possible way to ensure the
safety of everyone on the street, at every time,'' believes it will
take up to $100 million and cooperation from wireless phone
companies to make it happen.

Both seem like longshots.

But whether Coles succeeds in revolutionizing the cell phone
industry or his plan merely lands in the world's bulging drawer of
unused ideas, he does raise a timely point.

Despite all the energy spent converting cell phones into
powerful multitasking machines crammed with video games, digital
cameras and organizers, relatively few consumers are springing out
of their chairs to buy them.

What if the truly underrated business opportunity for wireless
carriers was the phones' more mundane use as portable panic buttons
and security enhancers?

Verizon Wireless is working on a program that would let cell
phone users view images sent by webcams -- perhaps so a parent could
keep tabs on a babysitter or a merchant could check on a closed
store, said Ray Taylor, director of strategic products.

Nextel and Sprint PCS said they were in talks with developers
about potential new security services, but representatives would
not offer specifics.

Sprint chief William T. Esrey recently told a telecommunications
conference, in response to a question from Coles, that Sprint was
interested in possibly bringing Amber Alerts -- pictures of missing
children disseminated by police -- to cell phone screens.

Of course, when it comes to security, wireless carriers already
have their hands full.

The Federal Communications Commission is requiring that wireless
providers make it possible by 2005 for emergency 911 dispatchers to
determine the physical location of people calling for help from
cell phones. The effort is eating a huge portion of wireless
company resources, and an array of financial and logistical
obstacles is making the rollout excruciatingly slow.

In an attempt at making an end-run around the system, Tendler
Cellular Inc., a Boston-based company launched in 1996, sells a
device called FoneFinder that attaches to some cell phones. When a
user calls 911, FoneFinder's global-positioning (GPS) chip reads
the person's latitude and longitude and automatically barks the
coordinates to the 911 dispatcher along with a cry of ``Mayday!
Mayday!''

Some phone carriers, such as Verizon, have stopped offering such
``one-touch'' emergency options, however, because they tend to be
accidentally tripped too often, unnecessarily tying up already
swamped emergency dispatchers.

Coles said his plans for the wireless personal security service
have driven him for nearly 15 years. Trying to make a version of it
come together in Britain a decade ago drained all of his money,
forcing him onto welfare and then into taking a job in an
auto-components factory.

After saving enough money to try again, Coles went to
Washington, D.C., in 2001 and launched GPNS Corp. -- a tiny company
that he hopes will become mothership for thousands of franchised
private answering centers.

Coles maintains that while the nationwide move to upgrade
wireless 911 systems holds promise, his system would be a better
alternative -- and give wireless carriers a higher chance of selling
their new camera-equipped phones.

Imagine, Coles says, if witnesses during the recent sniper spree
in the Washington suburbs could have taken pictures rather than
relying solely on memory. The snipers' blue car might have turned
up in a few images -- and from different angles -- perhaps giving
authorities a clue that their profile of a white van was off.

Coles, who holds three U.S. patents on transmitting images and
position data from portable devices, believes video eventually
would replace still photos in future generations of his service.

First things first, though: Coles has to persuade wireless
companies and cell phone makers to install the hardware and
software that would make his one-click idea possible. He travels to
telecommunications conferences around the country, sharing his idea
with anyone who will listen.

``I've had years of struggle, but my instincts kept telling me
to go forward with this project,'' he said. ``We are absolutely
determined to make this work.''

------

On the Net:

http://www.gpns.com

------

Telecoms writer Brian Bergstein can be reached at
bbergstein(at)ap.org

The Associated Press News Service
Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press
All Rights Reserved

The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Publication date: 2002-11-08

© 2002, YellowBrix, Inc.

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