Find your nearest 'hot spots' with MTN

Looking for a fast-food outlet or petrol station in the vicinity of your current location, but you don't know the area? Look no further than MTN Compass, a quick and easy-to-use service that will deliver information you are looking for, at your fingertips.

This innovative new location-based service has been added to MTN's basket of offerings in celebration of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which kicks off in less than 20 days. MTN Compass enables customers to find points of interest (POIs) closest to where they currently are, using either their cellphone or the Internet.

This service gives location information and directions for a range of POI categories from which to choose, including the World Cup stadia, local weather information, fast-food outlets, nearby shopping malls, petrol stations, accommodation and more.

The MTN Compass service is available to all current MTN customers (contract, TopUp or Pay-As-You-Go). There is no monthly subscription fee; customers will be charged a service fee (21c per 20 seconds) and content cost (R1) only.

Says Serame Taukobong, chief marketing officer of MTN SA: “This service is quick and easy to use and will literally deliver the information you are looking for, on your handset in the palm of your hands. To use this service, all you need to do is to select a point of interest category, which will then present you with a sub-menu, such as McDonald's, if you selected 'food' as the POI. You will then be presented with information on the McDonald's outlet that is closest to your current location, including the physical address and a contact number.

“If this is the information that you are looking for, a request can be made for the details to be sent as an SMS directly to your cellphone. The SMS will also include a Web link that will enable you to access an online map on your cellphone, which will provide street-by-street directions from your current location to the selected point of interest,” explains Taukobong.

The POI categories on MTN Compass can be accessed in two ways: either by dialling *120*555# for the categories to be displayed on the cellphone, or by visiting www.mtn.co.za or www.mtncompass.co.za using a cellphone or computer, to access all the available POI categories.

“As our customers travel around the country during the World Cup, we are sure they are going to find MTN Compass of great use when they are hungry, thirsty, in need of a place to stay or want to know where the 'hot spots' are, away from home! Of course, this service will also prove to be extremely useful for football fans visiting South Africa for the first time,” states Taukobong.

This service, which is available through one of MTN's WASPs (Wireless Application Service Provider), AfriGIS, can be used for locating POIs only.

MTN also offers its customers two other location-based services - MTN WhereRU, to find the location of up to 10 consenting people, and MTN 2MyAid, which enables the customer to send a panic SMS to four predetermined cellphone numbers with location information when in an emergency situation.