Wayland, MA, USA, July 10, 2001 – The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces that the Call for Participation for the Open Location Services (OpenLS) Testbed is available at http://www.openls.org . The testbed will develop fundamental interfaces and services to allow a wide variety of location solutions to interoperate between infrastructure platforms and wireless devices.Organizations interested in participation or sponsorship of this testbed are invited to OpenLS Day on July 31, 2001 at the Hyatt Regency Reston, Reston VA. At the meeting OGC staff will discuss opportunities for involvement and sponsors will present their goals. There will be time for potential participants to interact and have their questions answered. Details are available at http://www.openls.org/Events/infoday.htm .Today, the use of open standards in this fast growing sector is limited. The results of this testbed will help increase the ability of location based services to operate across the various networks and platforms that characterize the global wireless market and to stimulate best of breed application services for meeting wireless customer requirements. Sponsors of the testbed include Hutchison 3G UK, ESRI with SignalSoft, Oracle with Webraska, Sun Microsystems, and In-Q-Tel.In October 2001, U.S. phone carriers will be required by law to be able to identify the location of cell phone callers. Commercial location aware applications for people on the move are becoming increasingly valuable in addition to uses in emergency response, public safety, and disaster management. Realizing the full value of location services depends on consistent communication across different regions, technology platforms, networks, application domains, and classes of products. This testbed addresses this requirement.The OpenLS Testbed follows several other successful OGC testbeds where technology developers worked in a hands-on collaborative environment to develop candidate interoperability interfaces, which were then implemented in their technology offerings. Participants gain firsthand knowledge of interfaces and are often the first to implement the final specifications in products for the global market.OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that “geo-enable” the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org and the OpenLS website at www.openls.org .– end –“
OpenLS Testbed Call For Participation Now Available
Wayland, MA, USA, July 10, 2001 – The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces that the Call for Participation for the Open Location Services (OpenLS) Testbed is available at http://www.openls.org .The testbed will develop fundamental interfaces and services to allow a wide variety of location solutions to interoperate between infrastructure platforms and wireless devices.Organizations interested in participation or sponsorship of this testbed are invited to OpenLS Day on July 31, 2001 at the Hyatt Regency Reston, Reston VA. At the meeting OGC staff will discuss opportunities for involvement and sponsors will present their goals.Realizing the full value of location services depends on consistent communication across different regions, technology platforms, networks, application domains, and classes of products.The OpenLS Testbed follows several other successful OGC testbeds where technology developers worked in a hands-on collaborative environment to develop candidate interoperability interfaces, which were then implemented in their technology offerings.
