Boost Mobile and loopt Launch Mobile Location-Based Service

Mae : Wireless Mobility Blog
Mae
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Boost Mobile and loopt Launch Mobile Location-Based Service

Last week I wrote an article about a new location-based service from Helio that lets friends find out the location of their nearby friends using a mobile phone.

Apparently, this type of service is becoming more popular, especially for younger mobile phone users; today an announcement landed on my desk about a similar service being launched by Boost Mobile (a Sprint Nextel brand) and loopt (a social mapping service startup in Palo Alto, CA).

The service, Boost loopt (try saying that ten times fast), “leverages the only 100 percent GPS-enabled wireless network to automatically update the location of everyone in a private network of Boost customers and displays that information directly on a map on the phone,” the companies said in a press release.

In a statement, Boost Mobile’s Director of Value Added Services, said: “Fourteen to 25-year-olds are committed to their social circles and constantly want to know where their friends ‘are at.’ They also comprise the majority of Boost Mobile’s customer base.  Could there be a more perfect marriage?”

Boost loopt will be available free through the end of 2006 to Boost customers with Java-enabled phones. (Application will be available to download starting November 20.) After that, the service will be offered on a pay-as-you-go basis for $2.99 per month for the first 30 days.

Perhaps what’s most interesting about this is that Boost loopt, like Helio’s Buddy Beacon, is that it uses GPS technology to determine locations of users.

In the article I wrote last week, I cited an AP report that said a similar type of service once was available from AT&T (discontinued after the acquisition by Cingular), which located users by measuring the distance a signal traveled between a phone and the nearest antenna—true triangulation, you could say.

GPS has now become so ubiquitous—and I would guess more accurate (but correct me if I’m wrong)—that it makes sense service providers would choose to use it for location-based applications.

If Boost loopt sounds intriguing to you, the service is being launched in conjunction, starting November 20, with a six-week-long campaign during which local subscribers will “encounter approximately 130 random event invitations listing the times and locations of where the Boost loopt Market Manager will appear.”

Using the service, subscribers can then zero in on the Market Manager, and use that info to claim a daily prize.

“Winners will be selected based on their ability to get to the event invite location first with a friend and demonstrate that they have Boost loopt service on their phone,” Boost said in its announcement. (More info about the contest at www.boostmobile.com).

One final note: if you participate in the Boost contest, let me know how it goes. It sounds like an interesting time.