At more than 15 years of age, Reach-U is relatively old in the business of telecom application development. The company began creating location-based service (LBS) solutions together with Ericsson in 1999. It developed the E-112 emergency GSM application in early 2000, making it Ericsson's first mobile positioning platform case.

Teet Jagomägi, the chairman of Reach-U, says: "We developed the technology to improve mobile positioning accuracy. Reach-U provided Ericsson with an enhancement, which later became full-scale middleware. We considered what other functionalities or enhancements application developers would like in order to make developing with MPS more user friendly. Applications made for demonstrating our middleware functionality have eventually become our business."

Having weathered the boom and bust of 2000-2001, Reach-U emerged as a key player in the European LBS market, which is expected to be worth more than EUR 2000 million by 2007. Throughout this time, both Ericsson and Ericsson Mobility World have played a key role in the company's international success.

Jagomägi says: "What makes our relationship with Ericsson Mobility World particularly strong is personal contact. Many companies focus on agreements and PowerPoints, but at Ericsson Mobility World it's the people that make it work. We feel our contact has the whole Ericsson organization behind him."

Barry McInerney is responsible for the distribution and channeling of LBS content and applications at Ericsson Mobility World. He says the relationship is symbiotic. "Reach-U creates easy-to-use applications that generate traffic and revenue for operators. Its wide range of applications, including innovative value-added services, enables Ericsson Mobility World to introduce niche applications to its customers."

Teet Jagomägi

Partnering with Ericsson Mobility World has given Reach-U the avenue it needed to break into global markets. Its first customer outside Estonia was Orange Slovensko in Slovakia. This operator has launched Reach-U's location-based services and attracted more than 300 enterprise customers in two years. Orange Slovensko's customers include transport, logistics and security companies, as well as retail stores, which use fleet-management services to track their mobile employees. The application allows enterprises to track employees using a web interface. Reach-U has sold similar LBS systems to operators in Estonia, Scandinavia and the Middle East.

It is not just Ericsson Mobility World's global presence that Jagomägi appreciates, but how the organization acts on its relationship with operators. He says: "We get constructive feedback on what operators have told Ericsson Mobility World. We find out what operators think is important. This kind of information is invaluable because what is important in, say, the Middle East, may not apply in Finland, for example. We need to make the right decisions when investing in product development. Having Ericsson Mobility World gather LBS market information into a single contact point is helpful. As a result, Reach-U's position becomes much stronger."

Jagomägi says a key benefit of being an Ericsson Mobility World partner is that it is a direct channel to the market, valuable for distribution. "For us, Ericsson Mobility World is a good advisor, a mentor of sorts," he says.

Some of Reach-U's most successful and popular applications include:

• E-112 emergency solution – Emergency 112 is a special application for Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) that enables pinpointing the location of 112 callers.     
• Monitor – Monitor is an asset-tracking application, with web, WAP and SMS interfaces.     
• FriendFinder – FriendFinder is a "standard" LBS end-user application, which has WAP, MMS, web and SMS interfaces by default. As a special customization, STK and USSD interfaces have also been made. Reach-U FriendFinder has some special features to attract most users, and it has proven successful on several operators' sites.     
• M-Poll – M-Poll is a location-based polling application, which can show the results of public polls on a web page or TV screen. Votes are cast using SMS or voice calls with interactive voice response (IVR).     
• Tourist Info – Tourist Info is a very user-friendly voice call (IVR) application platform. It has extensive content for some areas, and includes SMS, IVR, web, WAP, J2ME and also paper map atlas interfaces for browsing and hearing about the nearest sights.     
• Bomber – Bomber is a simple location-based game. It is played using SMS messages between two users or in single-user mode, such as a treasure hunt game. It has also extended to MMS and STK interfaces.
  
  By Kris Walmsley