Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Canadians Show Interest in Safety Alerts via Cell Phone

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 16:26:07 -0400

Canadians Show Interest in Safety Alerts via Cell Phone

According to a survey sponsored by Ericsson Canada, Canadians are more
interested in having wireless E-911 location services and safety alerts via text

message than they are in mobile Internet or camera-phone services. Fifty-six
percent of those surveyed said they were not interested in mobile Internet
services, and two-thirds said they had no interest in camera-phones.
Researchers conducted one-hour interviews with 2,000 people across Canada.

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Cellphone safety alerts favoured

Canadians cool to gadgets, survey finds

DAVE EBNER

Friday, April 11, 2003

Canadians want emergency-location services and safety alerts on their
mobile phones far more than they desire wireless Internet and camera
phones, according to study issued by Ericsson Canada Inc. yesterday.

"Emergency services are something lots of people understand," said
Megan Peart, marketing strategy director at Ericsson Canada, a unit of
network equipment maker Telefon AB LM Ericsson of Sweden.

When a caller uses a traditional fixed telephone to call 911, their precise
location is immediately known. With mobile phones, progress has been
slow. In the United States and Canada, it has mostly reached the point
where a 911 caller's location can be narrowed to about a 100-metre
radius in an urban area.

The U.S. federal telecom regulator has ordered the industry to introduce
so-called e-911 by 2005. Precise locating of mobiles can be done
through network technology or global positioning system chips in
individual phones.

This is the goal in Canada too but as in the United States it has proved
quite difficult thus far because of a variety of factors, including
technological hurdles. The U.S. initiative has been delayed numerous
times and in Canada an industry working group is trying to solve the
problem. According to the Ericsson survey, almost two-thirds of the
respondents showed great interest in emergency-location services.
About half of those surveyed showed strong interest in safety alerts,
such as an instant text message if a person's car window has been
smashed as a break-in occurs.

Meanwhile, services that the industry has been hyping of late are
garnering tepid interest from Canadians. Fifty-six per cent of people
surveyed are "not interested" in mobile Internet. Two-thirds don't care
about camera phones.

Lack of interest may stem from lack of awareness, the survey
suggested. Two-thirds of respondents didn't know they could access the
Internet on their mobile phones, the survey found.

Younger Canadians, not surprisingly, are more knowledgeable about
newer services.

"Youth drive [broader] awareness," Ms. Peart said.

The Ericsson survey was conducted last November with Starch
Research, a Toronto-based firm. The researchers conducted one-hour
in-home interviews with 2,000 people across Canada. The results are
considered accurate within 3.3 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/gtsearch/TGAM/20030411/RWIRE/Search/1/1/56/sortdate/10/Ericsson+/

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