WASHINGTON-The Clinton administration is expected to announce as early as next month a dramatic improvement to global positioning system accuracy, a move with enormous public safety and commercial implications for the wireless telecom industry.
The administration on Friday declined to confirm that such a policy change is in the works, but government and industry sources as well as National Security Council documents obtained by RCR indicate the White House is working on making enhanced GPS technology available to civilians and commercial entities far sooner than 2006.
The White House in recent months has been under intense pressure from commercial interests and some in the Pentagon to cease the intentional degradation of the GPS signal, a strategy originally designed to protect national security, but one that also limits GPS accuracy to 50 meters for civilians.
The White House initiative could be announced in May to coincide with the World Radiocommunication Conference in Turkey, according to a source familiar with the administration’s thinking.
Vice President Gore is a likely messenger of the GPS policy change, given his previous high-profile association with GPS issues in recent years and the fact that it would be a political plus for his presidential campaign.
In March 1996, President Clinton (at Congress’ urging) announced a new national policy to promote civilian and commercial use of GPS technology and called for a 10-year transition period to give the Pentagon time to prepare for a new environment in which civilians enjoy the same GPS accuracy as the military.
The same year, the White House’s National Science and Technology Council reported the civilian and commercial GPS market exceeded $1 billion annually and predicted that 100,000 more jobs could be added to the U.S. economy by 2000 as a result of commercial exploitation of GPS satellite technology.
“No decision has been made and we can neither confirm nor deny what is going to happen at this point,” said Bill Mosley, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation.
The administration does not want not to cede GPS technology global leadership to the French, who are developing a competing GPS-like system called Galileo. The project is partially funded by the European Union.
The removal of GPS signal degradation-also known as `selective availability’-will get position location down to 3 meters. With such accuracy, a tow truck or an ambulance would know exactly which side of the highway a stranded motorist is on, for example.
Because technology (such as `differential GPS’) has been developed to get around selective availability, it is seen as having lost its national security benefit. Differential GPS is bulkier and more costly than off-the-shelf GPS technology.
As such, there is a push to maximize commercial applications for mobile-phone users, boaters, hikers, car navigation systems and a host of other recreational and industrial sectors.
Three-meter GPS location precision would be a wholesale improvement over even what the Federal Communications Commission requires of GPS handset-based solutions for enhanced 911 wireless compliance; that is, location accuracy of 50 meters for 67 percent of calls and 150 meters for 95 percent of calls.
“There is such a commercial and public-safety demand, I think the federal government has realized that they have to cut off selective availability,” said Ed Hall, assistant vice president for industry relations for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
Wireless carriers have to report to the FCC by Oct. 1 on which technology-handset-based or network-based-they will deploy to comply with federal E911 wireless guidelines.
It is unclear which technology carriers are leaning toward. Carriers, among other things, are examining whether E911 position location capability can be leveraged to provide value-added commercial services to wireless subscribers.
Such a vast improvement in GPS location accuracy could dramatically transform the regulatory and business landscape for E911. Last year, there were more than 43 million wireless 911 emergency calls.
“The impact will be positive for all GPS guys,” said CTIA’s Hall.
One likely beneficiary could be Tendler Cellular Inc., a small Boston firm that developed a GPS mobile phone.
“With a flick of a switch, the president can give the world GPS pinpoint accuracy at no cost to the government,” said Robert Tendler, chairman of Tendler Cellular.
Tendler said he is working with two national retailers to begin selling FoneFinder phones-which will provide 3-meter accuracy with the termination of selective availability-next Christmas.
Tendler, who spearheaded a lobbying effort in the nation’s capital to have GPS technology improved sooner rather than later, said his phone not only provides location to E911 authorities but also is a fully developed telematics platform that permits location-based services with a push of a concierge button.
Originally developed for analog mobile phones, Tendler said the FoneFinder will be introduced in a Code Division Multiple Access phone manufactured by Toshiba Corp. and offered by Audiovox Corp.
“It won’t affect us at all,” said Ellen Kirk, a spokeswoman for SnapTrack Inc., a San Jose-Calif.-based unit of Qualcomm Inc. that developed a GPS mobile phone technology that takes GPS signal degradation into account.
Kirk said she believes the Pentagon will not support turning off GPS selective availability.
“If selective availability gets turned off, we don’t need to correct for selective availability, but all the other errors (atmospheric, ionospheric, environmental) are still there. So it really doesn’t matter,” she said.
