June/July 2008

Skyhook Wireless, a new form of tracking and location-finding infrastructure, has been given a European launch, promising the possibility of more precise location of people and assets, especially indoors and in dense urban environments.

Skyhook makes use of conventional GPS signals to do its tracking, but augments these by two other technologies. One involves detecting mobile phone masts, and the other is its real speciality – the Wi-Fi Positioning System.

In essence, this allows Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices to find their location by detecting Wi-Fi networks their immediate vicinity. They don't need to log on to these networks or interact with them. They just use them to work out their location.

This is possible because the company uses mobile teams to plot the location of existing Wi-Fi networks by reading the unique MAC address or 'signature' of each access point. It already claims to have a database of 16 million access points around Europe, and their locations are constantly updated. It says its teams have driven 750,000 km so far in building up this information.

The company combines location data from any or all these sources in what it calls its XPS hybrid positioning system, which aims to come up with a consolidated location fix that is better than GPS in many instances – and is achieved far more quickly.

While historically, Wi-Fi capability has been more common in laptop computers than mobile phones, Skyhook anticipates rapid growth in its use in phone handsets. It cites statistics suggesting that 360 million handsets with Wi-Fi will be sold annually by 2011.

Skyhook itself is more an infrastructure provider than an end-user service provider. It offers development kits to tracking and location specialists, and already numbers companies such as Apple Computer and Navteq among customers.

European-based suppliers mentioned at launch time included BuddyPing, described as the first mobile social utility in Britain, and Locle, a Dublin-based company providing a 'social mapping' application for mobile phones.

Among other providers announcing a Skyhook-based service is CSR, which already uses eGPS (extended GPS) to enhance the accuracy of basic GPS signals. According to senior vice president Neil MacMullen: 'CSR is excited by the potential of Wi-Fi to provide an additional dimension to location information.'

Skyhook was founded in 2003. It is privately held and is based in Boston, Massachusetts.