1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of utilizing information (when, where, who) related to a position of a user terminal (its user) that enters a communication area provided by a given radio LAN access point.
2. Description of the Related Art
Up to now, in the case where a service provider provides an access point of a public radio LAN, it is necessary to locate a radio LAN access point (hereinafter referred to also as “AP”) at respective locations.
The location of AP requires considerable expense, and for that reason, most of the access point services are charged services such as a monthly rate system.
However, when the service starts for free but thereafter moves from free to fee based, there is a tendency to reduce the number of subscribers after moving to fee based, and therefore the service provider wants to provide the service with no fee.
Under the above circumstances, there has been proposed apparatus for showing a subscriber an advertisement, obtaining earnings as an advertising fee, and making an access point service free (for example, refer to Patent Document 1).
The following are related arts to the present invention.
Patent Document 1
JP 2002-124993 A
Patent Document 2
JP 2001-111544 A
Patent Document 3
JP 2001-268125 A
Patent Document 4
JP 2003-67630 A
Non-Patent Document
RFC2865
However, because the conventional art presumes the advertisement with respect to the subscriber who presently exists on the access point, it is difficult to distribute the advertisement that is temporally free. This is because the advertisement delivery to a customer who is in the store presently can be performed by delivering the advertisement to a terminal accessing a network, but there arises a problem in that the above method cannot be performed in the case where the advertisement is to be delivered to the customer who has come to the store in the past but is not in the store presently.