Who Needs Tracking Implants? Wireless Phone Services Can Do That Now

I would expect adoption of this technology to take longer in the US, but it’s coming (link is free for the time being):

“Working Late” Won’t Work Anymore
New services can track you-or your loved ones-by cell phone

It sounded too Orwellian ever to succeed. In 2000, Korean cellular carrier SK Telecom introduced a service called “find friends” that lets others follow your every move, using a signal beamed from your handset. At the time, many wondered whether anyone would consent to such tracking.

But five years — and countless terrorist attacks, earthquakes, and other calamities — later, the service is taking off. “I used to be worried when my boyfriend didn’t answer my calls,” says Shim You Sun, a 25-year-old accountant who pays 11 cents each time she checks up on him. “Now I can rest assured that he is at work or busy attending a seminar.”

She’s one of more than 4 million Koreans who have signed up for various services using technology that can determine a cellular subscriber’s location. One, costing $3 per month, will send a message with your coordinates to friends and family periodically while you’re traveling. Another will automatically dispatch a text message to friends who get within a block or so of each other as they move around town. Yet another, costing 29 cents a day, will send a message if a person isn’t at a specified place at a certain time and then allows the tracker to see the person’s movements over the previous five hours. And 20,000 parents pay $10 per month for alerts if their children stray from the route between school and home. The Korea Association of Information & Telecommunication reckons such services are growing by 74% annually, with revenues expected to triple in 2007, to $1.54 billion, from $500 million last year.

In Korea, the future may have arrived early. Elsewhere it might take a while before consumers warm up to the idea of cellphone tracking. In the U.S., a company called Teen Arrive Alive offers parents a $20-a-month tracking service for their teens. But to date the company has sold the service to only one cell-phone carrier, Nextel.

Others are having a tough time, too. Cingular phased out a tracking service offered by AT&T Wireless when the two carriers merged last year. Small wonder: Less than 20% of Americans are willing to pay for such info, says market watcher Jupiter Research.

In other countries, consumers are proving more open to cellular tracking. In Britain, The Carphone Warehouse offers mapAmobile, a $52-a-year service that lets parents track their cell-toting kids. And in Japan, subscribers can sign up for text messages advertising bargains at department stores as they pass by.

Of course, technology like this can have useful business applications:

Korea, though, is clearly at the forefront — and not just for consumers. Hwang Yoon, who runs a call center for 1,500 taxi drivers, uses a service that broadcasts text messages to cabdrivers within a one-, two-, or three-kilometer radius of a fare’s location. The first driver who responds — by pushing a button on the phone — gets the job. “This technology is an excellent and cheap fit for us,” says Hwang. Sales of business-related tracking services in Korea are expected to jump more than fivefold this year, to $248 million, from $43 million last year.

I find most of the personal applications of this technology very creepy, but I suspect that safety concerns will eventually outweigh privacy worries for many, if not most, people.

I’m also concerned that this technology can be turned on or off without users’ knowledge or consent, and at the extreme make “1984″ look like a relative freedom-loving picnic. The Chinese government, to name one example, would be in police-state heaven if they could impose this technology on their citizen-subjects.