Polaris Wireless, the global leader in high-accuracy, software-based wireless location solutions, announced today that it is participating in a groundbreaking indoor location technology market trial organized by the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) advisory committee, the Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC). The trial is taking place from November 15 through December 31, 2012 in urban, suburban, and rural communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Polaris Wireless is the only network-based location technology provider that is being tested in indoor environments, as other network-based location technology providers withdrew from participation in the CSRIC trials.
"We are very enthusiastic to participate in the CSRIC trial for indoor location," said Manlio Allegra, Polaris Wireless CEO and Co-founder. "This vote of confidence reflects our leading-edge location technology performance, especially in indoor environments, through deployments all over the world."
The trial involves the simultaneous testing of indoor location technologies from four leading companies: Polaris Wireless, Qualcomm, Boeing, and NextNav. The trial includes Polaris Wireless Location Signatures (Polaris WLSTM), a software- based RF Pattern Matching approach to the high-accuracy location determination problem, requiring no changes in the wireless device or in the wireless service provider's base stations. CSRIC's goal is to identify technologies that can be deployed to enable PSAP's (Public Safety Answering Points) to quickly and accurately locate emergency callers. One of the leading challenges for today's public safety responder is how to accurately locate an emergency caller indoors. This challenge will only grow as mobile subscribers increasingly come to rely upon their mobile devices for the vast majority of calls, both indoors and outdoors. The percentage of 911 calls placed from mobile devices indoors is increasing. While PSAPs do not track this statistic, the FCC states that 70 percent of all 911 calls are made from a mobile device, thus a significant amount of those calls are assumed to originate from mobile devices indoors. According to a J.D. Power survey, approximately 60 percent of calls originate from indoor environments and this statistic continues to grow every year.
"ATIS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions) welcomes Polaris Wireless' participation in the testing," said Susan Miller, President and CEO of ATIS, the organization that has developed many of the standards and methodologies used in the testing. "Polaris Wireless' contributions in ATIS and CSRIC, and its knowledge of the criticality of location accuracy to emergency services, will play a critical role in understanding the capabilities of the current location technologies."
Polaris Wireless has long been involved in CSRIC and ATIS efforts to standardize and promote location technologies. The company was among the first to deploy a software-based location solution that meets the FCC e911 mandate for location accuracy, and a Polaris Wireless executive currently serves as co-chairman of CSRIC's efforts on improving indoor location technology.
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