- Cell phones are giving employers new ways to check up
on employees in the field--and raising fresh workplace privacy concerns
as a result.
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- On the leading edge of the trend is Nextel Communications.
The wireless provider began selling its Mobile Locator service last November,
giving bosses an easy way to find employees who carry GPS-equipped cell
phones.
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- Earlier this month, mobile tracking firm Xora showed
off the latest version of its Nextel GPS (global positioning system) phone
software. The company says 1,600 corporate customers have signed up for
its services, including "geofences" technology that sets off
an alarm at the office when field workers go to preprogrammed off-limits
sites, such as a bar or a park. News.context What's new: GPS-enabled cell
phones can track users, and employers are eager to keep their mobile workers
on an electronic leash.
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- Bottom line: Bosses want the service, many consumers
want the service, and the technology is becoming cheaper and more widely
available. Get used to the eye in the sky.
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- More stories on GPS
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- "There's no electro shock--yet," Xora CEO Sanjay
Shirole said.
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- Employee-tracking devices are gaining steam thanks to
ever-more-accurate GPS technology and a U.S. mandate requiring wireless
companies to develop ways for emergency workers to find the physical location
of people who dial 911 on a cell phone.
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- Developed in the 1970s by the U.S. military, GPS uses
signals from low orbit satellites to triangulate the position of a ground-based
receiver. GPS trackers were once an expensive luxury, but costs have plunged
with the expansion of cellular-phone services.
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- Now new enhanced 911 (E911) emergency regulations governing
wireless carriers promise to unleash profitable new GPS services, analysts
say. To comply with the rules, carriers have begun running more accurate
GPS technology capable of supporting a range of commercial services that
go beyond emergency location.
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- "This high-accuracy infrastructure is setting the
stage for high-accuracy location-based services," said a spokesman
for TruePosition, a cell phone location service provider.
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- Other GPS cell phone service providers include TeleNav
and uLocate.
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- Tracking the market In a sign of growing market for such
services, GPS chip designer SiRF Technology, which provides GPS technology
for handset maker Motorola, has seen its revenue grow from $15 million
in 2001 to $30.4 million in 2002 to $73.1 million last year. The company
went public in April.
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- Here in Houston there is a giant billboard that says
something like, "Slackers beware" in advertising the GPS phones
and walkie talkies. They might say in the article they don't recommend
this technology for sniffing out loafers but their actions say something
different. --Terrence Mann
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- Chip designer Qualcomm is also seeing demand for its
GPS One technology, having signed up 15 carriers worldwide and around 20
handset manufacturers. As of April, about 120 cell phone models contained
Qualcomm-based GPS units. Along with providing chips, Qualcomm sells server
software for improving GPS speed and accuracy.
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- Xora said hundreds of companies, including transportation
giant U.S. Foodservice, have signed up for its GPS TimeTrack technology
to monitor employee timesheets, jobs and locations using GPS-enabled Nextel
phones.
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- GPS TimeTrack is a Java program that sits on a cell phone,
and periodically requests latitude and longitude information from the phone's
GPS system. At this point, Nextel is the only company that makes a GPS-enabled
phone that works with the software, although the company expects the application
to be supported by other phone makers. "There's no electro shock--yet."
--Sanjay Shirole, CEO of Xora
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- Xora's product is taking off quickly. It was only July
when the company said it signed its 1,000th GPS TimeTrack customer. "It's
just incredible momentum," said Ananth Rani, the company's vice president
of products and services. "We're adding about 200 a month."
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- As GPS technology proliferates, there's growing awareness
among cell phone owners that the devices can track them. Nearly half of
all wireless phone users and 55 percent of all wireless Internet users
knew of some location-based services, according to a survey by In-Stat/MDR.
More importantly to U.S. cell phone carriers, more than a third of those
surveyed said they'd be willing to pay a monthly fee for location services.
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- Nevertheless, the surveillance capabilities of these
phones are raising privacy concerns.
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- Every move you make, the boss is watching you One of
the earliest examples of how an employer can walk this fine line is in
Chicago, where about 500 city employees now carry geo-tracking phones,
mainly as a tool to increase their productivity. The phones were distributed
to employees only after their unions won several concessions, including
allowing workers to shut down geo-tracking features during lunch time and
after hours.
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- Tracking employees using Nextel phones
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- Another showdown over the technology erupted last year
in Massachussetts, when the state highway department proposed issuing GPS-phones
to snowplow drivers to achieve greater accountability from 2,200 independent
contractors used to clear the roads. Hundreds of drivers threatened to
sit out the first major snowfall of the year in protest, but eventually
agreed to use the phones on a trial basis.
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- A San Diego-based consumer advocacy group, the Privacy
Rights Clearinghouse, advises employers to only consider using the phones
to achieve a legitimate business purpose, and not check up on potential
loafers.
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- "There are good business reasons for using it,"
a representative for the group said. "But it must be coupled with
a very robust privacy policy."
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- - News.com's Michael Kanellos and Ed Frauenheim contributed
to this report.
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- Copyright ©2004 CNET Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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