TCS Receives Patent for "Location Derived Presence Information"

The company now holds a total of 63 patents and has 194 applications pending. This newest TCS invention allows presence information to be provided at the same time that location information is being requested of a wireless device. The company explains that the Presence information is the status of the wireless user such as “available” or “unavailable” or “busy.”

According to company officials, both location and presence services are message intensive within a mobile operator’s network. TCS’ newest invention cut downs network messaging traffic and provides better network reliability by lowering the number of messages needed within a mobile operator’s network. This is achieved by using a single message to aggregate both presence and location information.

The addition of presence information enhances social networking applications such as friend or family locator services or location-based instant messaging. TCS officials further explain that these social networking applications are increasingly being deployed on mobile operator decks as they deploy precise location based services. The company citesABI Research ( News - Alert) that forecasts location-based mobile social networking revenues to grow to $3.3 billion globally by 2013.

Noting that presence is an important complement to precise location information, Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Officer for TCS, Drew Morin, said that the combination of location and presence will be an important component as social networking applications such as MySpace andFacebook ( News - Alert) make the transition from the Internet to mobile applications.

TeleCommunication Systems produces wireless data communications technology solutions that require proven high levels of reliability. This month the company received two other patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Patent number 7,426,535 for “Coordination of Data Received From One Or More Channels Into A Single Context,” and patent number 7,424,293 for “User Plane Location Based Service Using Message Tunneling To Support Roaming.”