TeliaSonera creates one interface for LBS developers — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{ESRI provides open solution} TeliaSonera creates one interface for LBS developers

21 Nov 2004 at 17:25 GMT Timo Poropudas

TeliaSonera has improved its mapping engine capabilities for location-based services across Scandinavia. It has acquired an Open Location Services (OpenLS) standard interface for all its location based services from ESRI, a Redlands, California-based geographic information systems provider.

ESRI Sweden deployed TeliaSonera’s OpenLS platform based on ESRI’s server applications, and the ArcIMS OpenLS connector, says ESRI press release last week.

Together with Tele Atlas data, it is now possible for TeliaSonera to provide one standardized interface to all of its third party application developers.

Scandinavian mobile operators Telia, Sonera, and Netcom launched their location-based services in late 2000. At that time, each mobile operator implemented different GIS mapping engines with different map data sources and formats and proprietary programmable interfaces.

After the Telia and Sonera merger in 2002, TeliaSonera initiated a Nordic-wide project to standardize the disparate systems upon one common geospatial server platform.

“When we started the project, our goal was to implement a centralized geospatial platform with a single data source in one format and a standardized application program interface that our developer partners could easily develop against,” says Jörgen Jonsson, head of Location-Based Services for TeliaSonera.

TeliaSonera´s mobile users across the Nordic region can choose from a wide variety of location-based services applications including Friend Finder, find-the-nearest, traffic, weather, and mobile resource management services; games; and many more.