Skip to main content

Indoor Location technology deployed at MWC 2014

Sunday evening, on the eve of the week of this year's Mobile World Congress, a press release was sent out announcing that this year's MWC would have "one of the world's biggest Wi-Fi networks," with over 1200 access points covering over 240,000 square meters. This is enough to make anyone who's attended a previous MWC conference say "whew! about time!"

But deep in the press release is another, even more exciting, announcement: "GSMA is introducing new functionality in its GSMA mobile app... geo-localised routes." That's right - this year's MWC will include indoor location services, including mapping and navigation.

The press release doesn't elaborate, but the indoor location technology for the MWC Wi-Fi network and mobile app is being provided by PoleStar, a start-up company based on France with offices in the USA. PoleStar is one of over 130 companies profiled and analyzed in our recently-updated report on Indoor Location Positioning Technologies. The Fira Barcelona is the largest-ever deployment of PoleStar's NAO Campus platform.

We'll report more details on the exact technology deployed at MWC tomorrow, but in general, PoleStar's technology combines Wi-Fi fingerprinting, sensor fusion motion sensing, and their own "BlueSpot" beacons based on BLE (Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy) radio.  We've written about PoleStar's technology in our blog. We'll report as soon as possible on the exact technology deployed at MWC, and give our impressions of using it.

We hope everyone at MWC enjoys the conference - we always do!

For more on the 2014 Mobile World Congress, indoor location technology, and other innovative mobile technology, follow us on our blog or on Twitter.


Popular posts from this blog

33 Indoor Location Related Start-up Acquisitions

  Acquisitions Continue in the Indoor Location Industry; Grizzly Analytics Shows Price Growth at the High End and Continuity at the Low End New York, NY, February 22, 2021 - Despite the recent pandemic, M&A deals in the indoor location area have maintained a steady pace of 4-5 deals a year. At the high end of the spectrum, prices have increased to up to $400 Million for the highest priced recent deal and $165 Million for the second highest. At the lower end, many earlier stage companies have been acquired in the $2-3 Million range. A newly updated report from Grizzly Analytics gives prices and strategic details for 33 acquisitions in the indoor location area.  While the highest priced indoor location acquisitions have historically involved chip-based technologies, recent acquisitions have been more varied. “A few years ago the focus of indoor location M&A was all around pure localization technologies. The biggest deal to date is in fact for a chip-based localization ...

Adding real value to smartphone camera pictures

Most technology features follow a similar path, from imitation to improvement to transformation.  First they imitate something that came before, like telephones imitating the telegraphs of yesteryear.  Then they improve on them, like phones entering individual homes. Then they transform the entire endeavor, completely surpassing the previous technology, like phones automatically connecting people without operator involvement, which enabled society to communicate in ways that telegraph users never contemplated. Cellphone cameras are following a similar path.  At the beginning cellphone cameras were imitating digital cameras, adding the convenience of carrying only one device but basically doing the same as digital cameras did.  Then they improved on them, both with quality improvements and with the ability to share pictures wirelessly without wiring the phone to a computer.  The ability to instantly share and synchronize pictures from a phone is somewhat transf...

Intel acquiring gesture recognition start-up InVision Biometrics

News broke this morning ( here , here ) that Intel is about to acquire Israeli start-up company InVision Biometrics .  The company has developed 3D sensor technology that recognizes human movement, including gestures, and interprets them for a wide variety of applications. The company's technology is based on, and apparently builds on, research by Professor Ron Kimmel at the Technion Institute of Technology.  Professor Kimmel has a number of patents in this and other areas, some owned by the Technion and some licensed to companies. For Israel, dubbed the Start-Up Nation , this acquisition continues a number of trends.  It's Intel's second acquisition of an Israeli start-up company in October alone, having acquired Telmap at the beginning of the month.  Both acquisitions are interesting in that they move Intel into new areas that have been previously handled by software.  Grizzly Analytics predicts that Intel will acquire more start-ups in software areas th...