New Delhi, Apr 17: The government is studying the feasibility of giving value added service providers access to information related to the location of a cellphone as a part of the National Telecom Policy 2011.
 Once given a go ahead the service has the potential to locate lost cellphones, tracking people anywhere in the country, by simply feeding the mobile number in a web application even if the handset is not GPS enabled.
 "Location based services (LBS) is going to be part of content enablement under NTP. It is important for VAS and everybody knows that VAS is going to be name of the game," R Chandrashekhar, secretary, Department of Telecommunications told PTI.  The content enablement provision of NTP 2011, lays down the guidelines for VAS service providers for providing all kind of content over mobile phones like MMS, SMS, Alerts.
 The government is, however, contemplating how much information related to location of a mobile phone can be given out to public keeping in mind privacy issues and security concerns.
 "We are vetting it to decide how much of it can be opened for public," he added.
 There are various companies in the telecom sector that provide location-based services on request like information about nearest restaurants and hospitals etc. of a particular area where the user is positioned.

Lastupdate on : Sun, 17 Apr 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 17 Apr 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Mon, 18 Apr 2011 00:00:00 IST