Digital Envoy Introduces Geographic Locator for I-gaming Sector

Another entry in the up-and-coming market for online geographic locators made its debut last week, and it aims to differentiate itself by catering specifically to Internet betting services.

The new product, NetAcuity GS, was launched Friday by Atlanta-based Digital Envoy, a two-and-a-half year old company that specializes in online geographic intelligence.

Rob Friedman, the company's executive vice president of corporate development, said NetAcuity GS will help gaming sites follow different countries' laws regarding online gambling.

"We think that there's a huge need because of regulatory concerns-different countries have different laws with respect to online gaming, and up until now people have been asking users where they are," he said. "If you're in the U.S., and online gaming is illegal in the U.S., you're not going to say you're in the U.S."

Friedman said the difference between NetAcuity GS and other geographic locators available for Web sites is that his company's product was made specifically for Internet casinos and betting sites.

"Basically our technology is aimed directly at the gaming marketplace," he said. "We've sifted through our data to make sure it's as reliable as it could possibly be."

Sanjay Parekh, Digital Envoy's chief strategy officer, said the product works by specifying the location of the user's IP address. He said the company has developed more than 20 patent-pending methods to determine the geographic location of a given Web site user.

"By analyzing the Internet and knowing how everything is interconnected, we were able to understand the topology of the Internet, on which we were able to overlay geography," he said.

NetAcuity GS identifies the user's position by country with more than 99 percent accuracy. The software can also specify the user to an exact city with approximately 90 percent accuracy, although that ability hasn't been implemented in the version currently available, Parekh said.

Friedman said it's up to the operator to determine whether online gambling is legal in the player's location.

"We actually rely on the online casinos to know where they are authorized to do business because that's constantly changing and it's something that we'd have a hard time monitoring," he said.

Digital Envoy officially launched NetAcuity GS on Aug. 24 and is in talks with several potential clients, both European and American.

"There seems to be a huge need," he said. "We've been contacted by a lot of companies since we made the press release. There was an unmet need in the marketplace, and now that people understand that this technology's available, it's really solving a huge problem."