Polaris has developed a new solution that that leverages distributed antenna systems (DAS) to provides X/Y coordinates more accurately from phones located indoor. That product should be available at the end of the second quarter or at the beginning of the third quarter, Allegra said.

With a better solution to determine X/Y location coordinates indoors, the company's engineers will focus on developing a system to provide the altitude of a caller - the Z coordinate, Allegra said.

"You need to be 100% sure on the X/Y first. Otherwise, if you give a Z coordinate, you could send people to the wrong building," he said.

In terms of developing a Z-coordinate solution, Polaris already is able to determine the Z coordinate of a caller within five floors in a high-rise structure, such as a large office building or apartment complex. The company's plan is to improve the algorithms and location-estimation technology to provide a Z coordinate that is accurate within one or two floors before offering a product, Allegra said.

While Polaris is confident it can accomplish this goal soon in a good DAS environment, the company goal is to develop a Z-coordinate solution that does not require DAS, Wi-Fi or any other supplemental network technology - an approach that some competitors are taking, he said.

"We just assume that the carrier wants to locate a caller, and the caller is not on Wi-Fi network," Allegra said. "When you dial 911, you can have any kind of phone. You can have a feature phone without Wi-Fi. Or, if you have a smartphone, you may not have the Wi-Fi on.

"If we're able to crack that problem, that means we'll be able to locate all phones - smart and dumb - every time and everywhere ... I believe that, within the next 18 months, I'm very confident that we'll go down to one or two floors [of Z-coordinate accuracy]."

"About 5-6 years back we had started an R&D center in Bangalore where we have been developing software solutions for various countries as per the regulatory requirements. And with Indian regulators issuing a new norm to comply with highly accurate location based solutions (LBS) to all operators, it offers us a big opportunity to do business and provide solutions to operators," Bhavin Shah, Polaris Wireless's vice president - Marketing & Business Development told CyberMedia News over phone from the US.

"Given the huge opportunities provided by Indian telecom market, we are planning to double our head counts in next 12-18 months, largely focusing on operations and business development," Shah added. Overall, the company has around 120 people, of which 50 are based in India and rest at the headquarters in Mountain View.

While the DoT has asked all telecos to comply with highly accurate LBS by May 31, Shah opined that most operators will follow it at first and slowly others will follow suit.

In term of opportunities, LBS is different from value added services (VAS), as the former is more contextual in nature which takes into account the location and specific target audience. The company offers its solutions on different business model depending on operation choice, such as capex, opex and revenue sharing.

A software-based solution, this can easily be integrated with telcos' various platforms and provides the scalability required to roll out the services across many circles and even its cost is quite lesser than other hardware-based solutions.

"Overall our solutions have higher performance, accuracy and has no technology limitations," he added.

Further, Shah said that company has become the member of Cellular Association of India (CAOI) and is already in talks with telcos and has conducted trails for location based solutions for them.

However, the company hasn't signed any customers yet as many operators have approached the DoT to raise their objections and concerns on the recommendations. Besides, Polaris also plans to work with the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Management (IIMs) in the field of education, and attract talent in software development.

Compared to 2010, Polaris Wireless revenue book has grown four times and reported 30 per cent growth in revenues. In last November, the company partnered CANVASM technologies, Tech Mahindra's VAS subsidiary, to strengthen its offerings in India.

"We are very excited to enter the India market at this time," says Manlio Allegra, CEO and co- founder of Polaris Wireless. "At present we are the only wireless systems provider whose location accuracy is fully compliant with the Department of Telecommunications mandate, [unlike] most of the other competing systems marketed by OEM telecom vendors such as Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) or Nokia Siemens Networks , which are based on Cell ID or variations of Cell ID [technology]," Allegra tells Light Reading India. (See Aircel Enhances LBS With Ericsson.)

In a directive issued in mid-2011, the DoT amended the terms of India's service provider licenses so that, for security reasons, they are required to provide the location of any customer in their licensed areas. That requirement is expected to stimulate strong demand for location solutions: The bonus for service providers is that they can use the same systems to develop new location-based services as part of the VAS (value-added services) offerings.

According to Polaris it is working with local partners to deploy its solutions with India's mobile operators -- the company announced a strategic partnership with CanvasM Technologies Limited in November 2011 -- and hopes to work with India's government agencies to deploy solutions to enable mission-critical applications such as emergency calling and anti-crime surveillance.

"Our solution operates with any telecom infrastructure in India and any device, including the oldest legacy 2G handsets and the most recent 4G devices. Also, because of the software-based approach, the solutions are not sensitive to changes in the network, season, or geography, and are thus able to provide consistent high-accuracy location performance for all wireless devices in the network," claims Allegra, who also claims that the Polaris solution costs a fraction of the hardware-based alternatives.

The company, without disclosing any names, says its system has been deployed in about 14 mobile networks (GSM and UMTS/3G) in the Middle East, Africa and Asia/Pacific and in 24 networks in the U.S., where Verizon Wireless and Cellular One are customers.

Now Allegra is aiming to capture half of India's location-based solutions market by 2014, a share that could deliver significant revenues.

Growth opportunities
According to recent research by Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) , the location based services market in India is expected to grow to be worth US$500 million (INR 25 billion) by 2014. The market is expected to be fuelled by growing adoption of smartphones and 3G data services.

However, to reach to its full potential, India's service providers need to offer competitive data plans and work on technology partnerships to generate the data required for location-based services to be possible.

In addition to consumer services, location-based systems can also be used to provide emergency and security services, such as locating emergency callers and tracking suspected criminals, and for enterprise applications such as asset tracking and machine-to-machine location.

Location technology is in use today in the health industry (tracking Alzheimer's patients and organs for transplant), postal services (delivery vehicle fleet management), and judicial services (bracelet monitoring of criminals). "We expect all these uses and many others to grow in the future," Allegra adds.

To fuel its efforts in India and elsewhere, Polaris Wireless has launched a centre of excellence in Bangalore to support its clients throughout the world and plans to expand those operations, plus add additional facilities in other parts of India, during 2012.

LBS in India has been slow to take off. Do you see that changing?

The LBS market in the US is mature at this point. Everything there was triggered by the 1996 E911 mandate. Besides public safety, there's a huge multi hundred million dollar enterprise market for location as applied to logistics, sales force management etc. Nextel started this, followed by Verizon and then AT&T. Most enterprises in the US track everything that they own that moves-it can be a human or a physical asset. Knowing where the assets are is of huge importance. Given that enterprises act similarly all over the world, I don't see why the Indian market shouldn't grow in the same way.

How does your LBS technology differ from competing offerings?

The competitors are hardware systems. One is triangulation. The solution involves the deployment of boxes at each and every BTS. It's a nightmare. They use some of the backhaul from the BTS to the network and they need to sell the server. About ten years ago, this solution was deployed by AT&T for GSM. They spent a billion dollars for 50,000 sites and it took them three to five years.

The other competing technology is A-GPS. In the old days the chipsets would cost $12-15; today, it costs $1-2. This forces the operator to change the phone. Verizon adopted this solution for the US. It took them ten years after they enabled all the phones with GPS to have a decent penetration and it still cost $400-500 mn.

We invented an accurate software-based system. It doesn't touch the base system and involves no changes on the phone. Everything resides in the intelligent system that we integrate into the carrier's network. Once the system is in the network it is able to track all phones including roamers.

Our technology is deployed in the network allowing any enterprise to use it through existing GSM phones. We can go down to 40 meters and we do this indoors which is something that GPS can't do.

We have filed 50 patents of which 30 have been granted.

Do you support CDMA?

We do not have CDMA at present. We started with GSM as it had a much larger footprint in the US and from there we moved on to UMTS and later to LTE.

What would the cost and deployment time be in India?

This would cost $50-75 mn for a deployment on the scale of AT&T's and take less than a year. In a country like India, we could deploy in nine months.

We did a trial in Bangalore in July 2011 where 70% of over 3,500 calls were within 40-50 meters and 95% below 150 meters. These are blind trials where we deploy the solution and the carrier does the trial.

Where is your technology headed?

We are gunning for 10 meters accuracy. Once you move the location indoors, 100 meters isn't good enough; you need 10 meters for targeted marketing. It's futuristic but that's what's happening in the US and what we are focusing our attention on.

Tell us about the segments of opportunity and use cases that you see for LBS.

The four major segments are the enterprise, public safety, carrier applications (network optimization & zone-based billing) and consumer-oriented applications. Use cases include natural disasters. For instance, you could put a geofence around India's coastlines and broadcast an SMS before a tsunami strikes. The second one is that of emergency services.

In marketing campaigns, the technology improves the click through rate from the typical 1-3% to 7%.

You just signed up with Tech Mahindra. What's your game plan on partners?

We need local partners to help us deploy, maintain and service our business. We will be tying up with others as well.

Inundation of Mobile Phones

The number of mobile phones have been increasing regularly; and presently the number of mobile phones is around 900 mn. This number is bound to increase further with the adoption of machine to machine (M2M) technologies and new innovations. The day is not far off when we will have more mobile phones than people in the country.

Location Determination Methods

On the technology side, things are also evolving. For example, one of the most important features is to use the wireless infrastructure of a mobile operator to identify the location of any mobile device. Governments across the world have been using this technology for safeguarding their establishment both from internal as well as external threat. So, what is Location Based Services (LBS)?

The 3GPP standards organization has defined LBS architecture as a method for locating devices connected to a mobile network (2G, 3G, and 4G) in a systematic manner that enables users to enjoy an uniform service experience throughout the network. The architecture enables the deployment of multiple location determination methods for the support of location services.

In order to implement LBS, the Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India has come out with a new notification on May 31, 2011, which focused on the amendment of the Unified Access Service License (UASL) agreement for security-related concerns for expansion of telecom services in various zones of the country. The notification announced that mobile operators shall provide location details in the license service area as per the timeframe from the date of issue of this amendment and accuracy (see Table). The LBS should be a part of CDR in the form of longitude and latitude, besides the coordinate of cell sites, which is already one of the mandated fields of CDR. The accuracy of location varies with respect to urban, semi-urban & rural, and remote. Depending upon the location of the customer, the accuracy varies from 50 m to 500 m. Initially, the details will be provided for specified mobile numbers; but within 3 years, the location details shall be part of CDR for all mobile calls. All this will help in giving a big boost to security forces, as they can now narrow their area of uncertainty, which will give a big boost to the internal security system in the country.

Technologies Galore

Technologies used by the operators for LBS include Cell ID, enhanced cell ID, LMU, GPS, and A-GPS solutions. Cell ID is the simplest and most common form of location positioning and identifies which cell site or sector is currently serving the mobile device. The accuracy of cell ID location varies with the density of network cell sites deployment. Greater density yields greater accuracy. Enhanced cell ID helps in determining the mobile location based upon timing advanced and network measurement reports on a cell sector. LMU based location technology can be selectively implemented on a strategic basis in specific geographic areas to supplement performance. GPS and A-GPS solutions use measurements of GPS satellite signals to determine mobile locations. These solutions can be implemented only when mobile phones that are equipped with GPS hardware and software to perform key aspects of location positioning.

There are number of network based location positioning techniques, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Even in terms of cost they vary a lot, as some of them are hardware based, software based, or a mix of hardware and software. It is said that no single technique is perfect and can provide consistent results for all environments, so one should opt for a mix-and-match approach for location technologies to get accurate results.

Hardware based solution can provide high accuracy, but it can lead to a considerable cost for a large country like India, as one has to install LMU on each BTS. This is also a logistic nightmare, as it is not possible to do a large rollout that is impractical and unaffordable. So, the country should opt for a software based solution, which is easy to deploy and is cheap.

Multiple Players

In India, there are 4 players that are active on the LBS front-Creativity Software, CommScope, Ericsson, and Polaris Software. While Creativity Software uses predictive matching, Polaris Wireless opts for RF pattern matching, Ericsson uses fingerprinting, whereas CommScope uses multiple technologies.

Creativity Software: It utilizes predictive matching (patent pending) technology called Accuracy+ and supports 3G PP and 3G PP2 standards like GSM, 3G, and CDMA. The solution will support LTE in the future. LBS is a multi-vendor solution, which provides high accuracy and a low total cost of ownership. Speaking about the solution, Denis Maurin, CTO, Creativity Software says, "The solution developed is purely software based and encompasses the 3 layers necessary for a complete solution: The infrastructure layer where the location is calculated based on signal levels or timing information; middleware layer for connection with different mobile network entities; and an application layer covering both commercial and security applications."

DoT has asked all telecom operators to comply with norms where they can locate callers with an accuracy of 50 metres in urban areas. Polaris now has an R&D centre in Bangalore to support its clients across South Asia region. The Bangalore centre would be expanded to sales and support office for Indian clients, said Sridhar Kolar, vice-president and head of India operations, Polaris Wireless.

Kolar said "The government has asked all telecom operators to be ready to store and provide highly LBS by May 31, 2012. We are in advance negotiations with all the operators. It is regulatory requirement and we believe we will have more than 50 per cent of the market share by next three to four years."

The DoT has asked for phased implementation of complying with LBS requirement. According to the directive, in sub-urban and rural areas, 50 per cent of the callers should be located within 100 metres by 2014. And in remote places, 50 per cent of the callers should be located within 300 metres by 2014. Buoyed by the prospect, Kolar said, the company would be doubling its headcount in Bangalore by 2014. He added, "Even telecom operators can increase their revenues by providing LBS service to subscribers. Fleet management companies, transport companies, ITES companies and even families can locate their employees, fleets and children." Child tracker and family finder are the most popular LBS services abroad.

At present, the operators earn less than $25 million by providing LBS services. But Kolar expects both the operators and vendors' market to grow. He said, "By 2014, the commercial LBS market for telecom operators would grow to more than $250 million. And the market for vendors providing LBS solution to operators would be about $300 to $500 million in India."

An official from DoT who didn't want to be named, said, "Operators have asked the DoT to postpone the LBS deadline as they feel it would stress their balance sheets in the time when their growth has become stagnant."

Sridhar said, "We offer software-based LBS solutions. We don't sell hardware which are to be fitted in towers. Hardware also have maintenance cost. Our solution is 1/6th of what hardware-based solutions cost."

Dr. Spain earned a BS degree in Electrical Engineering, an MS degree in Electrical Engineering and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

"We look forward to working with CanvasM and Tech Mahindra to ensure that wireless operators in India are able to easily and cost-effectively deploy our location solution for emergency call management, enterprise, and other consumer location-based services."
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The solution enables mobile operators to more easily identify the location of emergency calls made from a mobile phone, and provides increased revenue opportunities for mobile operators who introduce value added services and location-based services to India's growing base of mobile device users. With successful deployments around the world and field proven results in the Indian market, the partnership is expected to serve multiple wireless operators pan India. Polaris Wireless recently expanded its India ‘Centre of Excellence' development and operations organization, based in Bangalore.

In a recent field test, the performance of the Polaris Wireless high-accuracy location solution exceeded the India Department of Telecommunications mandate for accuracy in urban-areas.

"Partnering with Polaris Wireless gives CanvasM the ability to provide customers in India with the most accurate wireless location solution in the market today," said Jagdish Mitra, CEO, CanvasM. "Together, the ground-breaking innovation in location technology of Polaris Wireless and the Tech Mahindra legacy of pioneering cutting-edge solutions for the wireless industry are an unbeatable combination."

"We are very pleased that high-accuracy, network-based wireless location is becoming a reality in India given the high percentage of feature phone penetration," said Manlio Allegra, CEO and Co-founder of Polaris Wireless. "We look forward to working with CanvasM and Tech Mahindra to ensure that wireless operators in India are able to easily and cost-effectively deploy our location solution for emergency call management, enterprise, and other consumer location-based services."

Mumbai-based market research firm Ovum predicts that location-based services in India will grow significantly, bolstered by 80% annual growth in 3G connections over the next five years, and interest from high-value early adopters, such as working professionals and the burgeoning youth sector, which is expected to grow to about 150 million subscribers in 2012.

The solution enables mobile operators to more easily identify the location of emergency calls made from a mobile phone, and provides increased revenue opportunities for mobile operators who introduce value added services and location-based services to India's growing base of mobile device users.

"Partnering with Polaris Wireless gives CanvasM the ability to provide customers in India with the most accurate wireless location solution in the market today," said Jagdish Mitra, CEO, CanvasM.

"Together, the ground-breaking innovation in location technology of Polaris Wireless and the Tech Mahindra legacy of pioneering cutting-edge solutions for the wireless industry are an unbeatable combination."

Manlio Allegra, CEO and co-founder of Polaris Wireless said, "We look forward to working with CanvasM and Tech Mahindra to ensure that wireless operators in India are able to easily and cost-effectively deploy our location solution for emergency call management, enterprise, and other consumer location-based services."

"Having established our MEA headquarters less than one year ago, we are very pleased at the growing demand for our high-accuracy wireless location surveillance solutions in the region," said Manlio Allegra, Polaris Wireless CEO and co-founder. "Our success is directly attributed to our unmatched ability to provide a 2G/3G-compatible high-accuracy location and accurate mass location surveillance solution."

The Polaris Wireless Altus application suite is the industry's only software-based surveillance solution that enables accurate mass location, providing users the ability to simultaneously locate all subscribers in a wireless network in real time and on a historical basis. This unique capability enables functions, such as target identification, tracking via geo-fence, and post-event analytics, which are vital to the anti-crime and anti-terrorism surveillance efforts of Polaris Wireless customers in the MEA and Asia-Pacific regions.

"International customers choose Polaris Wireless because of its leadership in providing flexible location solutions," continued Allegra. "We are being awarded multi-million dollar deployments for mission-critical services by international governments because we understand and can quickly adapt to the problems our customers are facing."

To maximize its accuracy location performance, the Altus application suite is being deployed with the OmniLocate platform powered by Polaris Wireless Location Signatures (WLS^TM), the most accurate software-based location method for dense urban and indoor environments. Polaris WLS is capable of locating a wireless device to within 50 meters and helps customers avoid the costly and time-consuming maintenance associated with hardware-based location solutions.  Polaris Wireless provides its customers regular product enhancements and updates, and 24/7 technical and operational support for optimal performance.