SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR APPENDING LOCATION INFORMATION TO ACOMMUNICATION SENT FROM A MOBILE TERMINAL OPERATING IN AWIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEM TO AN INTERNET SERVER

A location appending system appends location information concerning a mobile unit to a communication passing through a gateway between a wireless network and the Internet, the communication sent by the mobile unit. The location appending system includes a gateway interface, an Internet request parsing unit, a location determination unit and a wireless network interface. The gateway interface allows the location parsing system to operate in conjunction with the gateway. The Internet request parsing unit parses communications passing through the gateway and determines which of the communications require location information. The location determination unit identifies the associated mobile unit and produces a locate request that includes the identity of the mobile unit. The wireless network interface forwards the locate request to the wireless network receives a locate response from the wireless network. The location determination then determines the location information based upon the locate response. Then, either the location appending system or gateway appends the location information to the communication. The location appending system may include a database that couples to the location determination unit which contains cross-reference information that is used by the location determination unit in determining the location information. The location information may include a zipcode corresponding to a current location of the mobile unit, longitude and latitude information corresponding to a current location of the mobile unit or other location specific information. The communication may comprise markup language.