Skyhook Wireless
today announced that it has expanded its network roll-out to now include uninterrupted coverage in the 70 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Earlier this year, Skyhook announced that its Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS), the first wide-area positioning system leveraging 802.11, or Wi-Fi, rather than satellite or cell tower-based technologies, was available in 25 U.S. cities. With this milestone, the Skyhook Wireless database of over 3 million commercially mapped private and public access points is the single-most accurate and reliable Wi-Fi based location determination solution available. Today, the company is on track to complete the top 100 cities in the United States by the end of this year and has begun its network roll-out in Europe and Asia.
"Location-based search and other services are on their way to becoming default capabilities in mobile solutions of all forms," said Craig J. Mathias, a principal with the wireless and mobile advisory firm Farpoint Group (Ashland, MA). "Driven by such factors as governmental regulations for E911, concerns regarding public safety and home land security, the growing popularity of personalized experiences for online users, and requirements for reliable fleet management, a platform that taps into an existing Wi-Fi infrastructure offers vendors of location-based services and applications an easy-way to deliver their offerings without adding expensive hardware or the requirement for a clear view of the sky."
"Continuing our network expansion to now include the top 70 metro areas is an important milestone," said Ted Morgan, founder and CEO, Skyhook Wireless. "This clearly speaks to the density of our database, the broad availability of our technology and our commitment to provide an unprecedented infrastructure for location-based services that leverages the proliferation of Wi-Fi across the country."
Skyhook Wireless' WPS has the unique ability to automatically identify a user's current location through a combination of Wi-Fi and IP location determination techniques and then publish that location to any location based service, application or device. Using a patent-pending data collection system, a proven operations model, extensive post-processing and quality control gates, Skyhook adds new coverage cities by mapping every street within a metropolitan area and then updating that network coverage through a continuous process of re-mapping. Alternative data aggregators are dependent on individual volunteers that independently collect access point information using varying collection technologies and techniques that are not subject to a central quality control or management processes. As a result, WPS is the only solution that can provide the consistent and reliable performance required for commercial-grade services, applications and devices that depend on accurate location determination.
Until the availability of the Skyhook Wireless system, GPS or cell tower-based systems were the only potential platform for basing location-based services. As evidenced by slow growth in such services, these systems proved to be costly to implement and prone to problems with accuracy and reliability. Using WPS' software only model, any Wi-Fi enabled laptop, PDA or Wi-Fi enabled phone
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