chris et al, More food for thought on Orbi... wonder what the thread makes of this article from NY Times and implications for Orbi ,specifically Magellan division? ...
Regards
Richard B
PS Maybe Orbi should work with these guys
NTA CLARA, Calif. -- The world's two largest digital cellular phone
companies and a
Japanese microelectronics giant plan on Monday to
announce separate deals with a
three-year-old Silicon Valley start-up to produce
global positioning system chips
inexpensive enough to be installed in cellular telephones.
Nokia of Finland will announce a $3 million investment in
the start-up, Sirf Technology Inc.,
while both Ericsson of Sweden and Hitachi will announce
partnerships to develop global
positioning systems, or G.P.S., for consumer products.
G.P.S. devices use signals from satellites to pinpoint a
location anywhere on the globe. The technology was
developed by the Pentagon and first made its way into
civilian use in specialized navigational systems for
ships and airplanes.
The new backing for Sirf, a relatively unknown
company, is the strongest signal to date that G.P.S.
technology will increasingly become part of everyday
life.
Start-ups like Sirf are being joined by established
contenders like Trimble Navigation in rapidly adapting
global positioning technology for a wide range of
consumer electronics gadgets as well as for virtually
any movable object, whether automobiles or luggage.
"We will put this technology in our products beginning
as early as the year 2000," said Daryl Toor, an
Ericsson executive. "Our vision is that increasingly, a
small portable phone will be your gateway to the
world."
The convergence of portable wireless electronic
devices and the World Wide Web may soon make it
conceivable for consumers to type questions like
"Where is the nearest pizza parlor?" into hand-held
devices and receive an answer in text or even from a
robotic voice.
By licensing its technology to consumer electronics
companies and chip makers, Sirf is
hoping it will be able to transform the G.P.S. industry,
which until now has been built around
different proprietary systems for every company.
"Bringing in Ericsson and Nokia is a huge coup for Sirf,"
said Dale Ford, an industry analyst
with Dataquest of San Jose, Calif., a market research firm.
"Licensing technology to
semiconductor companies could become a very large
business."
Sirf has been developing
G.P.S. technology on smaller and
smaller chips, and at
the same time has been lowering the
price to the point where
this technology can now be an
economical component in
most consumer electronics
products.
The company's founder,
Kanwar Chadha, a former Silicon
Valley executive at
Intel and at the S3 Corporation,
describes an array of
applications for G.P.S. technologies
that go far beyond currently available navigational devices
used by sailors, pilots and hikers.
For example, when G.P.S. receiver prices fall below $10,
probably some time early in the next
century, it will be possible to use them as security
devices. Anything from a car to a
computer would know its location and could be programmed to
automatically shut itself off
if it was moved illegally.
"Nobody had been looking at the really exciting G.P.S.
applications,"
Sirf's founder said.
By re-engineering G.P.S. receivers based on microprocessors
and
digital signal processors, the chips that enable sound in
computers
and cellular phones, Sirf executives say, the company has
realized
major performance improvements in the technology.
Industry analysts who have seen Sirf's prototypes said they
were more sensitive than
existing products, permitting them to function at an
acceptable level in the urban canyons
that have traditionally blocked G.P.S. signals.
Sirf engineers recently demonstrated a prototype device
that was able to begin reporting
location information almost instantly and could continue to
communicate with orbiting
satellites from the basement of a one-story parking garage.
Current G.P.S. systems usually require a number of minutes
to start delivering location
information and fail when they are blocked by buildings or
trees.
The new technology also has privacy and security
implications, in part because the Federal
Communications Commission has required that cellular phones
be able to provide position
information to within 125 meters, or roughly 400 feet, by
2001 so they can be located when
placing 911 emergency calls.
There are now two contending technologies competing to meet
the F.C.C. requirement. One,
developed by companies like True Position Inc., uses
complex software to locate cell phones
by a triangulation method based on measuring the difference
in arrival times of signals
received by different network antennas.
In contrast, the G.P.S.
receivers provide location
information based on
measuring the differences in arrival
time from a
constellation of Air Force satellites.
Both systems have
strengths and weaknesses -- and
different implications
for privacy. For example, while the
network method may prove
superior in some urban areas,
G.P.S. systems will be
more reliable in rural regions.
Some privacy advocates
prefer the G.P.S. systems, which
they argue give the user control in deciding whether or not
to transmit location information.
Using a triangulation system, the phone company could
determine the user's location any time
the phone was turned on.
This difference has become more important in recent months
because the F.B.I. has indicated
that it expects cellular telephone companies to make
location information available to
law-enforcement agencies. |
