GPS is the other wireless network. Phone towers and antennas were put up by wireless carriers like AT&T and Sprint. But the 24 GPS satellites were launched by the Pentagon, back during the cold war. The government envisioned them as a military tool, helping to coordinate soldiers and equipment. The new world of high tech has changed that. The satellites today communicate with the 100,000 GPS units that are manufactured each month and embedded in everything from Hertz cars that give drivers en-route directions, to the PDA add-ons that allow golfers to track shots.
The most promising GPS application, however, has yet to be perfected: wireless phones. The FCC has mandated that by 2005, all handsets must include technology to allow 911 operators to locate wireless calls, just as they can with calls from land-based phones. Most carriers are already behind schedule. One of their excuses is that GPS technology doesn’t work well inside buildings. Obstructed locations like stairwells and “urban canyons” between buildings are especially tricky. Satellite signals have to travel 12 miles through the atmosphere down to the planet’s surface. Move inside or next to a high-rise, and the strength of the signal decreases by a factor of 10–which is why GPS is often useless in cities. Kim says that Enuvis’s patented software, which sits inside phones and on the carrier’s network, analyzes extensive pieces of the spectrum and is able to pick out the GPS signal from the static noise.
Enuvis has raised $15 million and is currently making plans to roll out its technology in Asia, which Kim says is moving faster to deploy GPS than U.S. carriers. “It’s ironic,” he says. “America owns and operates the satellites, but the companies making the most money are foreign.” Kim faces a more daunting obstacle than American sluggishness. One of his competitors, SnapTrack, was snapped up by Qualcomm, and is being used by Sprint, the U.S. carrier furthest along in including GPS in its wireless phones.
But even when the new algorithmic technology is packaged into all wireless phones, the GPS revolution will be incomplete. In the effort to meet the FCC’s e-911 deadline, wireless firms say they still need the cooperation of local telephone companies and the public-safety answering points (PSAP), which are the operators who actually field emergency calls. Only one PSAP (in Rhode Island) has incorporated GPS technology so far. There’s also the question of how wireless firms will recoup the cost of adopting GPS, and whether consumers will use the optional service and overlook the privacy implications of having their locations trackable at any time.
Analysts like to spin the advantages of “location-based services.” That’s industry-speak for ginning up wireless phones to allow users, say, to get directions as they’re walking down the street. The research firm Yankee Group projects the market for these features to reach $18 billion by 2006. Before that happens, though, as companies like Enuvis preach, the first challenge will be getting GPS to actually work.
