As of this summer, it is highly likely managers will be able to track the whereabouts of their employees by using a new service currently in the preparations stage at Orange Romania.
The provisional name of the new service is “Monitoring”, though this could change before the commercial launch of the service planned for June of this year, said George Soare, project manager with Orange.
From the outset, the service will be available throughout the entire country and will allow managers to find out the approximate location of any of their employees. Managers will need only select an employee”s number from a predefined list in order to view his or her position on a map that will appear on the computer screen. The service will be accurate to within 500 metres inside cities and 20-30 kilometres in the countryside.
Soare explained that Orange is working together on the project with Hungarian company TopMap, which will be responsible for devising and constantly updating the maps displayed to users. “At the moment, detailed street maps are complete for most of the cities.”
He added that the cost to the customer for the new service will be revealed shortly before the official launch, with the first clients expected to opt for the service being shipping, courier and even taxi companies.
Another service the operator is planning to launch in June will offer Orange subscribers the possibility to locate points of interest closest to them, such as shops, restaurants, cinemas and tourist sights. The provisional name for this service will be “Find Nearest”.
A great deal of thought is also being given to promoting multimedia content over mobile phones.
“In 2005 we will primarily focus on developing data services with higher transfer speeds using EDGE technology, and we intend to promote and boost usage of certain services such as video streaming and live TV,” Yves Gauthier, Orange Romania”s commercial manager, told Ziarul Financiar.
In order to provide content Orange has partnered with Mediafax news agency and the Media Pro group.
“We will expand EDGE (known as 2.75G) coverage to 80% of the Romanian population,” said Richard Moat, Orange CEO.
EDGE technology will be complemented by UTMS technology (3G) next year. “This way we will be able to provide high-speed Internet services to a wider customer base, instead of focusing only on certain cities,” he said. The benefit of this strategy, says Gauthier, is that where 3G services are not available, customers will be able use EDGE instead of having to rely only on GSM.
mihai.musatoiu@zf.ro