Elisa and Radiolinja in Finland have been customers of Trackwell for several years, offering personal location based services in their country. The services have now been extended so they are not only applicable in Finland but also in Estonia with other countries to follow. Following is a press release from Elisa and Radiolinja regarding this new service:

"ELISA AND RADIOLINJA EESTI THE FIRST ONES TO FACILITATE CROSS-BORDER POSITIONING SERVICES

Elisa and Radiolinja Eesti are the first ones in the world to facilitate the use of positioning services that exceed national boundaries. Previously the use of positioning services abroad has not been possible. The technical term 'location roaming' refers to the uninterrupted use of positioning services even when the user of the mobile phone travels to the coverage area of another operator in another country.

"Location roaming was not implemented before because interoperability of different operators' positioning systems is technically challenging, and in some cases it has been regarded even impossible. Radiolinja Eesti was the first one to accept the challenge issued by Elisa, and now together we have proved that location roaming is possible," says Product Manager Tuukka Toivonen at Elisa.

Elisa's customers are in a prime position to utilise location roaming. By deploying the Elisa Paikannin (Elisa Positioner) service on the Internet, customers can track an object or a person in Estonia on a map. In the near future, Radiolinja Eesti's customers will also be able to access the positioning service while visiting Finland. Elisa's customers can register to the Elisa Paikannin service at http://paikannin.elisa.fi/.

"For the progress of the sector it is important that the number of roaming operators increase both in Finland and abroad. So far the expansion of positioning services has been slowed down by the uninteroperability between the subscriptions of different operators. Elisa is willing to develop positioning services with other national and international operators," says Toivonen.

Location roaming offers new opportunities for those service providers that utilise Elisa's positioning interface and offer location-dependent information. Extending service providers' databases from Finland to include information in the roaming target countries would mean that Finns could access familiar positioning-based information services in such places as Tallinn as well. "