By Mike Boyer
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Las Vegas cabbie was impressed.

On a business trip last week, Rob Deubell, president of Raco Wireless, a Blue Ash supplier of wireless data products, helped his lost cab driver find his way with the company's newest product.

Called OpenMotion LS, the free information service helps users with Internet capable wireless phones find nearby services such as gas stations, restaurants or ATMs, and provides directions on how to get there.

"The cabbie didn't know where he was going. But using our product on my cell phone, I was able to locate our destination and give him directions in about 10 seconds,'' Deubell said.

The service, which Raco has introduced in Cincinnati and plans to market nationally to Yellow Pages providers and other companies, marries a national database with GPS, or global positioning system, technology for wireless users.

Raco Wireless is a unit of Raco Industries Inc., a 12-year-old Blue Ash company providing data collection equipment to businesses. It was co-founded by Rob Adams, president.

The privately held company's move into helping people locate themselves is a natural evolution of its traditional business of helping companies keep track of assets and inventory, officials said.

As workforces became more mobile, the company moved from bar-coding and scanning equipment into global positioning, tracking vehicles through the network of satellites circling the globe.

"I had the idea if we could pull off the technology side, we could be effective,'' Adams said about OpenMotion.

He said Raco developed OpenMotion using vendors and other suppliers in about six months.

"We've always been pretty entrepreneurial,'' said Adams, who started selling bar-coding and scanning equipment to now defunct area retailers such as Swallen's and Van Leunen's.

Raco, which employs 62, has revenues of $15 million and has won awards for its rapid growth.

Adams and Deubell said Raco's goal was to develop an open system that other content providers could deliver advertising and other services around.

Cincinnati Bell Directory Inc., Yellow Pages publisher, has begun a three-month trial of the product.

"We're always looking at the market and different ways to deliver Yellow Pages content,'' said David Miller, vice president of sales for CBD. He said it's too early to say whether CBD will make a longer commitment to OpenMotion.

Industry analysts have estimated the market for so-called location based services could approach $12 billion by 2005.

One of the largest providers is go2 Systems Inc., an Irvine, Calif. company that launched its wireless directory locator in 1999.

But Deubell said Raco believes OpenMotion is more robust.

While go2 views itself as a competitor to traditional Yellow Pages, OpenMotion wants to team with local Yellow Pages companies to include detailed information on businesses beyond addresses and phone numbers.

OpenMotion is more versatile because it can be used with cell phones equipped with or without GPS location technology, he said.

By teaming up with Yellow Pages and other content providers, Raco hopes to build revenues from advertising dollars and fees for enhanced services, Deubell said.

With government moving toward requiring enhanced 911 services, which allow emergency dispatchers to locate wireless users, service providers are looking for ways to build revenue to offset the cost of new equipment, he said.

Adams said his company expects to begin signing up Yellow Page providers soon. He says OpenMotion revenues could approach $100 million within five years.

In an increasingly wireless world, Raco sees plenty of potential for the service not only from business people traveling in strange cities but also from consumers on the go.

One example, cited by Deubell: "Suppose you're a quick oil-and-lube shop, and business is slow. Rather than having your workers standing around, you could use the system to post a promotion offering 40 percent off oil changes over the next hour.''

John Hannan, manager of business services for Retek Inc., a software supplier in Mason, spends a lot of time on the road and has been using OpenMotion for a few weeks.

"It's pretty slick,'' he said.

During a recent trip to the San Francisco area, he was heading into the city for dinner and looking for an ATM.

"The GPS knew where I was and was able to find an ATM within a mile in a matter of seconds,'' he said.

E-mail mboyer@enquirer.com