One of the first commercially available Galileo location services was (kind of) announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain this week. The result of a partnership of several European companies, this service is expected to be launched in December of 2015, with support of Galileo, GLONASS and GPS, with additional systems to be added as necessary.
The new service is currently unnamed, and there isn’t a whole lot of clear information on what, exactly this service will provide, although we do know that it was funded in part by Horizon 2020, the European Commission R&D program. From what I can gather, the service is designed to deliver a full suite of real-time Assisted-GNSS and location assistance with particular emphasis on the uses of EGNOS and Galileo signals, although multiple constellations will be supported.
The service will also provide free developer access to help “foster innovation” in location applications. According to the press release, this service was created by RX Networks Inc, Thales Alenia Space, Telespazio, STMicroelectronics and Novero and backed by the European GNSS Agency (GSA).
There aren’t a whole lot of specifics in the press release that I received, but the main company that seems to be running the show, RX Networks, is known for working with other companies on the behind-the-scenes parts of mobile location software and such, so I presume the service mentioned will run on mobile devices, but I’m not sure.
You can take a look at the full press release here for a little more information, and I’ll keep an eye out and update this article if I find anything else.
