GPS World

Tag: M2M

  • Vodafone Certifies u-blox LISA 3G Modules for M2M

    u-blox, provider of  wireless and positioning semiconductors, software and solutions, announces that its LISA-U200 and LISA-230 6-band UMTS/HSPA+ module series as well as LISA-U270 dual band module has achieved Certified M2M Hardware status by Vodafone, the world’s second largest mobile telecom company. Vodafone owns and operates networks in more than 30 countries and has partner networks in over 40 additional countries.

    The certification allows global customers to design LISA-U2 modems into M2M devices operating over Vodafone’s extensive 3G network in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas. Main applications include vehicle and asset tracking, industrial automation, metering, and security devices.

    The LISA-U2 series is a multi-band 3G module series in LCC package delivering high data-rates (5.76 Mb/s uplink and up to 21.1 Mb/s downlink) with voice and data capabilities. They are compatible with consumer, automotive and industrial applications. For telematics applications such as fleet and asset management, the module provides easy integration with u-blox GPS, GLONASS and QZSS receivers. The modules are compatible with all UMTS bands used worldwide.

  • Sprint Selects u-blox for Long-Term CDMA Network Support

    Sprint and u-blox have expanded their collaboration in support of Sprint’s commitment to the 2G (1xRTT) CDMA network. As a carrier committed to network choice, Sprint believes M2M customers should be able to choose or combine 2G, 3G and 4G LTE capabilities, depending on their particular requirements, u-blox said.

    Sprint expects to maintain its 2G network capability for the long term as part of its overall network vision strategy. Both companies believe 2G remains an important network option for business customers, including those that deploy machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions as part of their service or product offerings.

    This collaboration will allow business customers to extend the product lifetime of their existing 2G M2M devices by seamlessly migrating to the CDMA network with minimal effort. Those customers concerned about the continued availability of 2G GSM networks in the U.S., can now select from a variety of affordable u-blox modems tested for compatibility on Sprint’s CDMA 1xRTT network. The u‑blox FW75-C200 modem, a pin-compatible replacement for widely used GSM modem MC75i and its variants, is well suited to continue on 2G without having to migrate to much more expensive 3G and 4G modems.

    “Now is the opportune time for any customers migrating off GSM or designing new products for telematics, telemetry, automotive, and security applications to take advantage of Sprint’s 2G platform,” said Wayne Ward, vice president, M2M Group, Sprint. “Sprint’s network vision strategy enables ongoing 2G connectivity with the security and performance advantages of CDMA, while also supporting a smooth path to CDMA 3G and LTE 4G for customers who choose that transition. We are pleased to collaborate with u-blox to bring these options to 2G-embedded M2M customers.”

    Sprint’s network vision supports network choice for our customers nationwide. As with 3G, Sprint Network Vision is expected to improve Sprint 2G coverage, capacity, and reliability. M2M and other emerging solutions can involve widely varying data transmission speeds. Sprint expects to be able to provide all these network platforms for the long haul as part of a continuing portfolio of technology options.

    “We are proud to have been selected as the preferred provider by Sprint. It will allow customers to leverage Sprint’s impressive CDMA coverage in the US. Forced migration from 2G GSM to HSPA can now be avoided, given Sprint’s commitment to 2G longevity of the CDMA network,” said Nikolaos Papadopoulos, president of u-blox America. “Should customers still want to offer their devices in 2G and 3G, we at u-blox have already prepared for this parallel track with our nested-design module philosophy for 2G/3G platforms, where customers can select the inexpensive CDMA SMT modem LISA-C200.”

    u-blox CDMA module series consists of the FW75 CDMA 1xRTT module in an industry-standard package, as well as the LISA and PCI-express form factors. In addition to technical support, reference designs, evaluation kits, firmware and free module samples, Sprint and u-blox will soon announce nationwide hands-on seminars focusing on GSM to CDMA modem migration.

  • Continued Growth of Connected Vehicle and M2M Highlighted at MWC

    The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is getting bigger every year — so much that it’s almost a mini CES that is hard to navigate and find companies…much less big location-based services news. While there were no big jaw-dropping mergers and acquisitions, big product roll-outs and partnerships, this conference will continue to be the main showcase for location companies wishing to establish a presence in Europe.

     

     

    BARCELONA — It was tough to find out what might be the big deal for the location industry here at the Mobile World Congress, among 67,000 attendees and more than 1,500 exhibitors. Two areas continued to stand out, as they had at the January Consumer Electronics Show: the rise of the connected vehicle and machine-to-machine connections.

    An MWC keynote was given by Ford Motor Co.’s chairman Bill Ford (right), who gave long-term strategies for the company, which includes big connected car components. Ford’s Sync, which is already on 4 million cars in the United States since it was launched in 2007, now is available in Europe. The company hopes to have 13 million cars equipped with the connected service by 2015 — 3.5 million of those in Europe.

    One of the more significant deals at MWC was Sprint Nextel’s announcement that it will be the strategic wireless partner for Chrysler Group’s Uconnect voice-activated vehicle communications system.

    In keeping with the connected theme, GSMA’s Connected House featured such companies as AT&T and Airbiquity that showcased the transfer of connected lifestyle from car to house. Airbiquity demonstrated its products for cloud-based services, mobile phones and application integration into vehicles. The company launched its Application Developer Program at MWC.

    TCS Offers Family Locator to Auto Makers for Connected Car Initiatives

    TeleCommunication Systems announced at the MWC that it’s incorporating the TCS Family Locator into connected vehicles and is offering it on the iPhone and Android platforms. TCS Family Locator allows users to locate family members’ vehicles through aerial photos or maps to monitor when they arrive or leave specific areas.

    TCS was a pioneer in enhanced 911 roll outs, which was the basis of today’s location-based services, said Jay Whitehurst, TCS senior vice president, commercial software group.

    The cloud-based Family Locator product is being offered to vehicle manufacturers, telematics service providers, and wireless carriers for connected car initiatives, the company said.

    Currently, Family Locator supports BlackBerry and other phones.

    For the enterprise market, TCS said its Workforce Locator mobile resource management product now has extended coverage to data cards and any device with a SIM card, which includes mobile Wi-Fi hotspots and tablets.

    Also at MWC, TomTom said it partnered with HTC to provide the maps, points of interest, and turn-by-turn directions for a line of HTC smartphones in India. TomTom views India as a growing market, citing a study that forecasts more than 5.2 million smartphones will ship to the country this year.

    The HTC deal is TomTom’s first major partnership in India, said Nuno Campos, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing for its licensing division. Campos said that Jocelyn Vigreux, formerly president of TomTom USA, has been consolidating all business units in India to steward the company’s HTC partnership there.

     

    TomTom also announced a partnership with NDrive to deliver maps and other content to its location-based applications. The three-year deal is big for TomTom as NDrive has millions of users worldwide, Campos said.

    When asked how TomTom is competing against the Googles of the world, Campos said that the market is big enough to run a profitable mapping business. His only crack at Google was that “they are finding that making maps isn’t easy.”

    TomTom, through its joint venture partner AutoNavi Holdings Limited, also announced a seven-year agreement with Qoros Auto, an international automotive corporation. TomTom and AutoNavi will deliver HD Traffic, marking the first real-time traffic customer for the newly expanded joint venture. In 2013 the first cars — aimed at young metropolitan users — will hit the streets in China equipped with HD Traffic, providing drivers with the most accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date traffic information available.

    In other Mobile World Congress news:

    • Urban Airship said its new Unique Opt-In Report allows users to gain insight in to the numbers of distinct users opting in or out of push notifications. This enables companies to hone mobile messaging strategy based on users’ behavior.
    • Locaaid rolled out its Global Cell-ID at MWC. This new feature, accessible via Locaid’s Location-as-a-Service (LaaS) platform, allows enterprise mobile developers to acquire carrier-certified, permission-based location on their devices in more than 165 countries around the globe.
    • American Roamer changed its name to Mosaik Solutions at MWC. Through its partnership with Europa, the company’s Global Coverage Analyzer and CellMaps are marketed in Europe. Mosaik Solutions’ customers include AT&T International, OnStar, and Comcast.
    • ALK Technologies Inc., which previously charged for its navigation applications, now said its CoPilot GPS is a free app for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. The company contends that CoPilot is a lot more than Google’s free map service and allows users to search millions of pre-installed points of interest for nearby restaurants, hotels, and gas stations. The company had a booth at MWC and exhibited at Showstoppers, as did Poynt.

    Indoor positioning continued to be a big topic to enable LBS markets at the Mobile World Congress. Richard Najarian, Broadcom senior director, business development, said that market is shaping up. The company also showed off its Bluetooth Low Energy modules that enable indoor location positioning.

     

    Some other MWC observations:

    1. Qualcomm had an off-site reception for its indoor positioning partners that included Cisco and others.
    2. The Android room at MWC was huge…with such companies as Glympse participating.
    3. Telmap, now owned by Intel, which has recently said it will invest millions into connected vehicle initiatives, has a strong presence in Europe with many LBS applications.

    The company says it’s the No. 1 local content aggregator in Europe, according to Motti Kushner, Telmap’s chief marketing officer.

    Neustar, which is partnering with TELUS and other major operators in North America to create mobile services, had a large presence at MWC. The company’s intelligent cloud helps operators to integrate location and messaging, said Gary Zimmerman, Neustar’s director of product marketing.

    Some of these applications include geofence, which Neustar works with partner ZOS, to create opt-in mobile campaigns that send offers to subscribers based on their location. The company also offers enhanced location that shows how a brand can personalize location information once a consumer gives consent to participate.

    GPS World Partnering with GPS-Wireless

    GPS World is the GPS-Wireless (www.gps-wireless.com) conference’s exclusive media partner. GPS World’s Chris Litton will be on site at GPS-Wireless 2012, which is March 21-22 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport, to discuss why location companies should advertise in the magazine and LBS Insider, which has more than 10,000 worldwide subscribers.

  • Strategy Overhauls, Strong M2M, Privacy — and What More’s in Store

    It’s July, which means big news is slow to come by — and it is the opportunity to examine what will drive the location-based services market for the rest of 2011…and beyond. So far, consolidation is continuing, with Nokia combining digital mapping giant Navteq into a single LBS unit. In addition, strong entries into the machine-to-machine market include Iridium, while AT&T seeks to increase market share. Privacy issues were a big topic in the first part of the 2011, but will they hamper market growth the rest of the year?

     

    Nokia to Consolidate Navteq into Location-Based Services Unit

    In a move that looks like a strategy overhaul, Nokia plans to combine its Chicago-based Navteq digital mapping unit with its location-based services business. The new location and commerce division will be led by Michael Halbherr, who told LBS Insider in April that he was involved in Nokia’s $8.1 billion decision to acquire Navteq in 2007.

    Nokia had touted that it had a “hands-off” approach with Navteq, unlike competitor TomTom, which incorporated its Tele Atlas mapping unit so much that the TA brand is no longer visible.

    Halbherr told LBS Insider he predicted the demise of the portable navigation system early on, a market that competitor TomTom has been finding difficult recently. Navteq maps power Nokia’s Ovi Maps service for smartphones. Yahoo and Microsoft also incorporate Navteq digital mapping into their offerings.

     

    Privacy Legislation Looks For Consumer Consent

    New legislation aims to preclude such companies as Apple and Google from using customer’s location data without their consent. Senators Al Franken, D-Minn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., co-sponsored the bill, called the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011.

    Franken honchoed a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law hearing that grilled Google and Apple executives in May. The uproar about consumer privacy arose in April at a California LBS application developers’ conference when companies indicated that customer’s privacy data was collected and shared.

    How this legislation, if passed, will affect the industry is not known. But it has raised eyebrows in several market sectors. Thilo Koslowski, Gartner vice president, told attendees at an automotive telematics conference last month that privacy is a big concern to auto makers who want to incorporate LBS-type of connectivity into their new vehicles. Koslowski went further when he said that not only do consumers not want social media in their vehicles, the privacy factor is not going away — and the industry needs to take notice of that.

    Iridium Forging Into M2M Markets

    Saying the machine-to-machine market constitutes its fastest growing segment, McLean, Va.-based Iridium Communications has partnered with several industry companies to grow beyond its government markets.

    “M2M in 2010 exploded for us in 2010, a real tipping point. In short, we reduced the size of the 9602 [short burst data] module to the size of matchbook, so the much lower price point allowed us to win a bunch of new programs,” said Patrick Shay, Iridium vice president and general manager for data services.

    Shay, an industry veteran who worked at Motorola, Rand McNally and Hughes Telematics, said that Iridium plans constellation enhancements in 2015. “It’s a one-for-one [satellite] replacement with backward compatibility and no service disruption,” he said.

    Such big M2M names as Kore Telematics, Digi International, and SkyBitz have become Iridium partners. Kore integrates satellite connectivity into its Prismpro unit.

    One Iridium partner, DeLorme, said it is rolling out a personal communicator this fall with two-way satellite messaging, SOS capabilities, remote tracking and Android smartphone interface so messages can be posted to Twitter or Facebook. The unit will go for $249.95 and have subscription fees starting at $9.95 a month.

    Editor’s Note: The August issue of GPS World will carry an article about Iridium certifying Cubic Global Tracking Solutions’ Global Sentinel System.

     

    AT&T Location Information Services Focusing on Enterprise Market

    AT&T Location Information Services is greatly expanding its location marketing, particularly in M2M, with its partners Loc-Aid Technologies and TechnoCom Corp. The company announced the partnerships at its developer summit in January.

    The company is focusing on the enterprise market because consumer location-based services have been a tough go for AT&T. The enterprise/M2M market has been a good one for AT&T and its network-based location systems, said John Booth, AT&T LIS senior product manager.

    The interoperability with the other carriers helps to grow the market, Booth said. “Historically, a customer had to work with one carrier and that limited them,” he said.

    Booth says there are benefits in using a network-based location solution because it prevents users from needing to download applications or use a specific platform in order to be located. The services are both device and network agnostic, he said.

    Loc-Aid is working with AT&T on its Location-as-a Service offering where businesses can access a customer’s location based on requirements or events. TechnoCom and AT&T are creating location and messaging products for the enterprise market.

    AT&T is working with Road America, a roadside assistance service provider, for a network-based application for location capability in the event of an accident or break down. The service, called LocateMe, is a cross-carrier offering that links to Road America’s 24-hour response centers.

    AT&T is working on integrating other location technology into its network service offerings, Booth said. “We are working on a number of applications besides assisted GPS [and cell ID] to include Wi-Fi and RFID. We want something that works in whatever the environment — airports or railroads,” he said.

    In addition to call center and transportation logistics, which is AT&T’s strong areas, emerging markets include fraud prevention and even truancy monitoring. “School districts get millions of dollars in funding based on student attendance. It’s a natural location market,” Booth said.

    In addition to the truancy monitoring market, regular parolees and bail bond holders constitute a huge potential market. AT&T estimates there are 5 million parolees nationwide and 7 million bail bond holders.

     

    Carriers Still Focal Point for LBS Implementation

    For years there have been arguments about who is driving the mobile information market for LBS: Is it the carriers? Auto manufacturers? New media companies such as Google? Despite all of the talk, companies still are trying to align themselves to offer the carriers’ capabilities to implement LBS.

    The recent Alcatel-Lucent partnership with Polaris Wireless and Thales Alenia Space is an example of companies tailoring E911 type of location capability and marketing for carriers. The three companies have partnered to pursue business with Tier 1 wireless operators in the United States and other regions, said Bhavin Shah, Polaris Wireless vice president of marketing and business development.

    “Alcatel-Lucent and Thales Alenia Space have a working relationship based on the former’s prior part-ownership of the latter. Alcatel-Lucent and Polaris Wireless have pursued a closer relationship based on shared interests in promoting their respective location solutions to wireless operators,” he said. “Recent developments and announcement of the partnership were triggered by impending Tier 1 LTE decisions,
    and the fact that the partnership enables a quicker time to market than ALU building a location solution on its own, and Polaris Wireless and Thales Alenia Space approaching Tier 1 operators directly without a larger infrastructure partner.”

    Alcatel-Lucent is the platform provider and direct interface with the customer (network operator). ALU provides all hardware, middleware, and conducts sales, support, operations, and billing. Polaris Wireless provides network-based location technology and network interfaces, including Polaris Wireless Location Signatures (Polaris WLSTM) and other location technology, such as Enhanced Cell-ID. Thales Alenia Space, with its expertise in satellite positioning, provides handset-based (GPS) location technology.