Surging Demand For High Accuracy Mobile Location Integration Drives Expansion At CPS Facility

The worlds first facility for integrating high accuracy location software into mobile phones is expanding to meet surging demand from global handset manufacturers planning to launch product into the US market, it was announced today.

(Cambridge, UK) The worlds first facility for integrating high accuracy location software into mobile phones is expanding to meet surging demand from global handset manufacturers planning to launch product into the US market, it was announced today.

CPS opened the facility just six months ago offering testing and integration services for its pioneering E-OTD technology -- accepted by US GSM operators as the standard location solution. E-OTD offers a key benefit to handset developers in so far as it requires only a small software change. Other location solutions, by contrast, require costly hardware changes as well.

Today, upwards of 20 leading handset and chipset vendors are moving through the integration process as they target Fall 2002 for the rollout of E-OTD enabled devices. It is understood that these will include a range of both handsets and PDAs from established brand leaders.

CPS is expecting a number of significant announcements to be made by manufacturers during the next quarter as market launch nears. Recent FCC filings by operators identified a number of vendors working towards E-OTD integration. The FCC also predicted recently that by 2005 up to 150 million handsets will be location enabled -- around 95 per cent of all handsets in use -- indicating the size of the available market.

CPS Chief Executive Officer Chris Wade said: There is significant momentum building. We are seeing consistent, long term demand developing for our integration services from manufacturers. The throughput we are experiencing in our facility underlines the fact that major global players see E-OTD as the low cost high accuracy technology."

The company is now recruiting additional engineers to meet the growth in demand. The integration facility provides a standard laboratory integration and test environment for mobile terminals incorporating E-OTD technology. It enables all GSM terminal manufacturers to test the performance of CPS positioning software within their products before being released to manufacturing for commercial rollout. Until the opening of the facility, it was impossible for terminal manufacturers to provide laboratory test results to the mobile network operators that are launching location-based services utilizing E-OTD.

This latest news follows a series of important contract wins for CPS from network equipment vendors for its network/handset based E-OTD solution. Earlier this year, CPS announced that Nortel Networks and Siemens were to adopt their solution, following similar success with Ericsson late the previous year.

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Cambridge Positioning Systems

Cambridge Positioning Systems (CPS) licences Cursorä E-OTD technology to handset manufacturers and network equipment vendors and promotes and demonstrates the business case for high accuracy services to global mobile network operators. Cursorä, based on the Enhanced Observed Time Difference (E-OTD) system, delivers high accuracy mobile location technology -- up to 100 metres on GSM networks. CPS has conducted successful trials of the Cursorä system in the UK, North America, Asia Pacific and Europe.

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For further information, contact

Colin Ashcroft               
Cambridge Positioning Systems      
Tel: +44 1223 326 984
Mobile: +44 77 697 40296
E: colin.ashcroft@cursor-system.com

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