Globalstar to offer Australia-wide wireless location service

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 18 October 2006 16:36

Your IT - Home IT

In a move seemingly designed to take some of the heat out of the massive promotional campaign for Telstra's Next G network, Globalstar has announced plans for service to be launched next February to enable the location of mobile, high value assets anywhere in Australia.

Despite serving 98 percent of the population, the coverage of the Next G network is less than 30 percent of the Australian land mass and, according to recent research from In-Stat, existing and potential 3G customers are much more interested in high-quality mapping and navigation services than video.

Telstra is already getting into the market with Next G. One of the achievements Telstra bragged about during its October 6 Investor Day was how it had increased the efficiency of its 7000 strong field technician workforce, by equipping vehicles with GPS and field force automation systems. Now it is offering the same system to its customers.

Globalstar's planned offering is about remote tracking of a mobile asset rather than providing a mobile user with location information. However, according to Globalstar similar services are presently supported on cellular networks.

Globalstar has announced plans to launch the Globalstar Data Everywhere asset finder service provided by Tenzeng that will enables companies to locate, map and track high-value assets across all areas of the country using Globalstar's satellite network.