Thursday, August 28, 2008

Sprint picks uLocate’s WHERE for WiMax service

By Mass High Tech Staff

As Sprint Nextel Corp. continues to roll out its WiMax service XOHM nationwide, Boston-based uLocate Communications Inc. will provide its location-based application platform, WHERE, to power Sprint’s portal that will deliver local information and mapping services to subscribers.

According to uLocate officials, WHERE will function as a development platform for content owners that wish to use the location information contained in WiMax signal data for their applications.

Although no financial details of the deal where disclosed, uLocate said that its Buddy Beacon friend-finding application will also be available to XOHM users.

In addition to powering Buddy Beacon, WHERE delivers local information from Eventful, Yelp, GasBuddy, Zipcar, Starbucks and other services, officials said.

In February, uLocate signed deals to put the Buddy beacon service on four carriers — Helio LLC, now a part of Virgin Mobile; Sprint; Alltel; and MetroPCS networks, as well as for iPhone users. In addition to the new carriers, the Boston-based mobile location service company also integrated the application into social networking sites, including Facebook.

Also that month, uLocate acquired Zync Inc., a Boston developer of predictive social networking applications and owner of city-guide website Zync.com.

The company is backed by $16.5 million in private funding from a number of investors, including Cambridge-based Venrock, Newton-based GrandBanks Capital and Waltham-based Kodiak Venture Partners.