Before starting the development of a new Location Based Services (LBS) application some information should be taken into consideration.

First of all, it is good to know if the operator in your country has a Mobile Positioning System (MPS). In the Mobile Positioning FAQ there is a list of official Ericsson MPS customers. If your country is not on this list, remember that you can influence the operator to become interested in MPS. If your application is interesting, it can be a reason for the operator to buy your application and install the MPS.

Next it is really important to find out how the mobile operator integrates the MPS in their mobile network. Is MPS integrated with or without a middleware?

The Location Based Service (LBS) supplier, that hosts the third party application, can be connected directly to the GMPC, see Figure 1 below.

Some mobile operators choose to solve the integration of MPS in another way, with a so-called middleware between the application level and the MPS, see Figure 2.

If your application is to be integrated in the operators network as illustrated in Figure 1, the Java Mobile Location API (JML API) can be used. The JML API is intended for the development of Java-based server-side positioning applications for sending/receiving positioning requests/responses to the MPS. The JML API is platform independent. If you use the JML API you do not have to bother about data parsing or request sending and receiving over the Internet. It is possible to use other languages than Java but then you have to handle the parsing as well as sending and receiving the requests.

The JML API supports both the Ericsson proprietary Mobile Positioning Protocol (MPP) and the standardized Mobile Location Protocol (MLP). The JML API is included in the MPS SDK that can be downloaded under Tools on this site.

If there is a middleware between the application layer and the MPS, as illustrated in Figure 2, the developer needs to know how to connect and interact with the middleware. There are several LBS middleware suppliers that require different protocol support. Some LBS middleware suppliers offer an open API and an SDK to facilitate the development of LBS applications.

Ericsson has two LBS middleware supplier partners: Mobilaris (www.mobilaris.com) and LocatioNet (www.locationet.com).

The application developer should also consider if the application should be used in several mobile networks. In that case the developer needs to know how each operator has chosen to integrate the MPS. Some operators connect the LBS application directly towards the MPS while some have the LBS applications connected to a middleware. This might mean that the application developer is forced to relate to more than one API.