AWS Announces Availability of Amazon Location Service
Online Giant Says Location Service Costs Less Than Leading LBS Companies' Offerings.
Amazon Web Services [AMZN] announced the general availability of its Amazon Location Service, which allows customers to embed location technology into their applications using data from location-based services providers.
The new service offers Esri and HERE Technologies maps, points of interest, geocoding that converts location information to a point on a map, route planning, geofencing and asset tracking. The company says the service is one-tenth of the price of “most common LBS providers” as customers only pay for the number of user requests, assets tracking or devices managed, the company said.
In December of 2020, the company made Amazon Location Service available in preview form, according to Amazon’s Marcia Villalba in a company blog. Villalba said the company also rolled routing and satellite imagery as new service features.
Amazon Location Service is leveraging the boom in asset tracking, route planning, and location-based marketing that rely on connected devices. However, companies have been hampered by privacy and security, high costs and difficult integration of location services, the company said.
Amazon said LBS providers often impose licensing restrictions that give them access and use of a customer’s location data as a significant barrier. The company said that the service gives customers control of their location data by removing metadata and account information from queries sent to an LBS provider.
The company said the service is available in large areas where there are AWS servers. Each of those locations serves a large region of availability zones in Northern Virginia, Ohio and Oregon in the United States. In Europe, Frankfurt, Ireland and Stockholm. In Asia-Pacific regions: Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. Customers can assess the service through the company’s AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), or via the Amazon Location Service API.
Some current customers include Azit, a Japanese Mobility-as-a-Service company; Command Alkon, a delivery company that focuses on technology solutions for the global heavy construction industry; Coolstays, which focuses on showcasing unique and unusual places to stay across the UK, Europe and other areas with 3 million monthly page views and nearly 400,000 users; and PostNL, an e-commerce and postal logistics provider in the Netherlands.
Key Takeaways:
This announcement is a big deal because of the entity making it…and it claims that it’s already cheaper than existing LBS offerings (“the most common LBS provider”).
Amazon Location Service has built-in tracking and geofencing capabilities.
Amazon Location Service is integrated with Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, and Amazon EventBridge for monitoring, management, and log data.
ABAX Switches Map Vendors, Did It Dump Google?
ABAX said it is switching its map provider to HERE Technologies. ABAX, a European telematics company with 40,000 customers and 440,000 connected assets, said its newly acquired Automile and RAM track-and-trace companies will also use the digital map company’s location services.
The company said it will now be using HERE geocoding, map tiles, routing, speed limits and route matching.
Key Takeaway:
So who was the mapping company ABAX dumped for HERE? A search indicated that the company used Google Maps for its GPS-based mapping platform Triplog.
Contact: Paul Walsh, ABAX, 4748024971, paul.walsh@abax.no, www.abax.no.
Luokung Granted Motion for Preliminary Injunction
Luokung Technology [LKCO] was granted its motion for a preliminary injunction stopping the U.S. Defense Department from enforcing a Trump-era ban. Luokung, a China-based LBS company, was recently implicated, along with nine other companies, under Section 1237 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999.
As Location Business News reported earlier, Luokung Technology filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to fight the ban. As part of the lawsuit, the company filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the government from enforcing the ban.
The U.S. Defense Department contends that Luokung, along with the others, are “Communist Chinese military companies” operating “directly or indirectly in the United States.” The Trump-era DoD said that it is “determined to highlight and counter the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) Military-Civil Fusion development strategy, which supports the modernization goals of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring its access to advanced technologies and expertise.”
Key Takeaway:
So what is it? Are they a threat to the United States or not?
Other Location News:
News tip? Send them to kdennehy@driverlessreport.com.
😒 State Labor Unions Concerned About Vehicle Tracking. Connecticut trade unions are having privacy concerns about a Geotab tracking system for state vehicles. “At a price of $18.50 per vehicle, per month, the GPS tracking system will cost about $800,000 per year. The state expects the system will pay for itself within one year.”
👌 Simpleview Invests in Location-Based Marketing Company Stroll. The company is investing in Stroll “to help destinations engage with visitors in real time based on their interests and location.”
✔ Iridium Makes Strategic Investment in DDK Positioning. “DDK uses the Iridium network to provide global precision positioning services that can augment GNSS constellations.”
🤞 Hexagon’s Technology is Supporting the Indy Autonomous Challenge. AutonomouStuff and NovAtel, part of Hexagon’s Autonomy & Positioning division, are vehicle sponsors for Clemson University.
👍 Airspace Link Raises $10 Million. “What distinguishes Airspace Link from the other competitors in the market is its integration with mapping tools used by municipal governments to provide information on ground-based risk.”
👏 Daimler, Nokia End Mobile Tech War That Threatened Car Sales. Daimler AG and Nokia Oyj settled their dispute over the licensing of wireless technology patents in cars.
🤦♂️ Google Employees Admit in Lawsuit That the Company Made it Nearly Impossible for Users to Keep Their Location Private. Inflammatory headline, but nonetheless, interesting that the company employees claim there are privacy issues.
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Location Industry Briefs
Send your news to kdennehy@driverlessreport.com.
Mitsubishi and PowerFleet Roll Out Telematics Product
Mitsubishi Logisnext Americas entered into a reseller agreement with PowerFleet [PWFL] to introduce the new PowerFleet Enterprise Telematic Solution to North America customers. The product is available as a factory-installed option on all Mitsubishi forklift trucks, Cat lift trucks and Jungheinrich warehouse products, the company said. The product features localization and tracking via Wi-Fi.
Contact: Shannon Myers, Mitsubishi Logisnext Americas, (815) 568-2184, shannon.myers@logisnextamericas.com.
HERE Technologies Says INCREMENT P Expanding Location Content
HERE Technologies said that INCREMENT P is expanding the access to its location content on the HERE Marketplace. These data sets include Japanese road network data, detailed map data including building footprints, address data that corresponds to Japan’s unique address system, point of interest (POI) data and traffic information, the company said.
In addition, INCREMENT P provides information about upcoming road and city infrastructure, which can be used by customers for local marketing purposes, city and real estate planning.
Contact: Sebastian Kurme, HERE Technologies, 49 173 515 3549,
sebastian.kurme@here.com, www.here.com.
Parkopedia Extends Vehicle Service Payments Platform
Parkopedia is extending its parking payment platform to such vehicle services as EV charging, fueling and tolling payments. The new platform aggregates merchants and eliminates barriers to entry such as the need to swipe a card to unlock a charging station.
Contact: Adam Calland, Parkopedia, 44(0)7838219129, adam.calland@parkopedia.com, www.parkopedia.com.
Silent Beacon Updates Personal Safety App
Silent Beacon has released an updated version of its Personal Safety App. The app, available for both Android and iOS, allows users to call, text or email their emergency contacts and send live GPS footstep tracking information, the company said.
The company updated the app with such live features as a GPS map that allows emergency contacts to track the user's footsteps in real-time, the company said. The app is free to download and has no monthly fees if used with the Silent Beacon Personal Safety Device.
Contact: Katherine Otte, Silent Beacon, katie@silentbeacon.com, www.silentbeacon.com.
TraceSafe Posts Quarter Results
Asset tracking company TraceSafe Inc. [TSF) said it earned $1.3 million in first quarter revenue, with sales of $2.4 million expected in the next few months. Some quarter highlights include a wearable-based time and attendance pilot program for the $2.1 billion U.S. market and product development that led to the company’s platform to process 15 million contacts per day.
Contact: Emily Graham, Tracesafe, (604) 356-8111, emily@tracesafe.io, www.tracesafe.io.
LoRa Alliance Touts Membership Growth
The LoRa Alliance, an association that backs the LoRaWAN standard for the Internet of Things (IoT) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs), said it has the greatest number of certified LPWAN sensors on the market, with a 34 percent increase in certified devices in the past year. In addition, the association said that LoRa Alliance membership growth includes 40 new members joining in the past 3 months. One member, Abeeway, Actility’s subsidiary, deploys more than 60,000 tracking devices.
Contact: LoRa Alliance, http://lora-alliance.org.