M2M specialist Mach Communications teams with Seeker Wireless for mobile asset location.

Stuart Corner
Friday, 28 January 2011 13:20

Business IT - Technology

Australian machine-to-machine communications specialist, Mach Communications is working with mobile location technology specialist Seeker Wireless to add a location function to its M2M offerings.

Seeker Wireless says it is preparing for a technology and commercial pilot of its SeekerLocate technology with Mach Communications that will enable M2M cellular units to be tracked with two to three times the accuracy offered my mobile cell ID location systems and which can also be used to 'ring-fence' valuable fixed assets such as EFTPOS terminals.

According to Seeker Wireless, "Seeker's highly reliable geo-fencing technology allows a set-and-forget zone around an asset. As long as the asset is not moved, there is no network load, but if the asset moves out of the zone, an alert is sent to the owner of the asset. This set-and-forget capability means that the location of assets can be continuously monitored at low cost and with light network load."

Mach Communication's CEO, Shane Murphy, said: "We see a real need for a SIM-based location technology - if our customers need to locate an asset for inventory management, find a stolen car, verify a transaction or simply sanity-check that a device is alive, SeekerLocate is a simple, elegant solution to the problem. It meets an important need between GPS services and other location technologies, and as it's pay per use, the upfront costs for our customers are very low.

SeekerLocate uses a combination of standard cellular location technologies and Seeker Wireless' propriety SeekerZone technology. According to Seeker Wireless it "features a sophisticated hybrid location engine - the first of its kind to be deployed commercially [that] accepts any combinations of cellular, Wi-Fi and GPS observations, and integrates them seamlessly for superior location and quality estimates."

The SeekerZone technology provides the geo-fencing and movement detection function. It operates solely as a small client application on the SIM card that monitors the strength of nearby base stations to determine if the handset/M2M device has moved beyond a predetermined perimeter and then signals to the host system.

According to Seeker Wireless Recent independent tests made by operators on live networks have proven the ability of SeekerZone to deliver zone sizes of between 100 metres and 500 metres depending on the local network density with very high reliability.