Hosting and location-based services may seem an unlikely pair. Yet for those seeking to support enhanced 911 or "E911" caller location capabilities or those seeking to deploy commercial location-based services applications, hosting can provide more choice in the marketplace.

Intrado (News - Alert) officials say they want to make sure their company is a provider of choice for organizations seeking such services. The provider of emergency communications services has announced that wireless operators required to support E911 caller location capabilities - or those hoping to deploy commercial LBS apps - can do so by relying on a complete location hosting service provided by Intrado.

Hosted Intrado location solutions are enabled by Andrew Solutions' GeoLENs mobile location center and offer wireless operators advanced wireless caller location technologies without requiring that they purchase their own location systems. This offering is especially valuable for regional and local carriers.

"Intrado's Managed E911 and LBS service helps wireless operators reduce capital and operating expenses associated with delivering both essential and commercial services," said Dami Hummel, Intrado Mobility Services vice president and general manager, in a statement. "We believe wireless operators will benefit from a single-source solution built upon best-in-class technology from Intrado and Andrew.'

Operators gain access to a substantial range of caller location technologies with Intrado's new hosted service, including Assisted-GPS, Enhanced Cell ID, Cell ID and hybrid methods.

The comprehensive capabilities of Andrew's GeoLENs MLC enables the consolidation of all the capabilities of the various network location node types into one single-bay solution designed to be flexible, powerful and scalable. The result is a single solution capable of handling and coordinating all location requests across the network.

"GeoLENs MLC is the perfect solution for Intrado's hosted service because it is flexible to varying customer needs, capable of configuration and customization for the specific network environment," said John Baker, vice president and general manager, Network Solutions (News - Alert), Andrew.

"Different carriers with different needs want to do different things with location information; the combination of GeoLENs MLC and Intrado's hosted service can handle such individualized requests."

Intrado says it's currently the only provider of managed location services for GSM, UMTS, and LTE (News - Alert) networks. Smaller 2G and 3G carriers can implement advanced E911 caller location capabilities at a significantly lower cost with this new managed E911 location service.

Last month, Intrado announced that its next generation software, QuickResponse - an i3 compliant software package that allows easy management of voice, data and multimedia streams including instant message, text, photo and video - works within Intrado's Intelligent Emergency Network, as per a recent demonstration.

Intrado, which has helped define, build and maintain the complex emergency communications system in North America for more than 30 years, made a statement earlier this year that it believes the FCC (News - Alert) should go on more forcefully to start a strategy for a national framework that smoothes the progress in shifting to a next generation 9-1-1 emergency communications network.