Rosum: Taking GPS Indoors

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Wireless phone manufacturers and service providers have for years been required to put GPS and other location-aware technologies on their phones for 911 purposes, and they've been eager to figure out a way to develop revenue-generating "location-based services" to help them earn back the investment (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/9/06, "Radio-Shipment Tracking: a Revolution Delayed"). Internet-calling services will also want to incorporate location-based services. "Location is turning out to be a very interesting area for generating revenue," says IDC analyst Will Stofega.

The more a marketer knows about a person's location, the easier it is to send out tailored ads and messages, such as a restaurant coupon sent to the wireless handset of a consumer who's approaching a row of eateries (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/23/07, "The Sell Phone Revolution"). "When you know where someone is, you can serve up truly targeted ads," says Bill Tai, partner in Charles River Ventures, one of several venture funds that invested $16 million in Rosum in 2003. Others in the consortium include Motorola (MOT); SteamboatVentures, a venture capital fund affiliated with Disney (DIS); Allegis Capital; and government-backed In-Q-Tel.

That's not all the technology can do. If you put a module that receives TV-GPS location data and then reports back via wireless phone networks on an important shipment of goods, you can figure out exactly where it is at any given time, indoors or out. If the destination needs to be changed en route, finding it will be easier. Fire departments could deploy small TV signal generators that ping the radio handsets carried by firefighters, giving incident commanders a clear picture of every person fighting the fire, even when they're deep inside a building.

Pentagon Attention

And with TV shows making their way to both wireless phones and PCs, it's not much of leap to expect that TV tuner chips will in time show up regularly in both. "Any place you can watch TV, you can use this technology to determine location," says Charles River's Tai.

That idea in particular has caught the attention of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), and defense contractor Boeing (BA). Boeing announced on Apr. 18 that it has awarded Rosum a contract to develop its technology for use by soldiers on the ground—those fighting in dense urban environments, where GPS signals can be hard to reach, or where the signals might be intentionally jammed by the enemy. Boeing says it will use Rosum to research any number of ways to supplement or replace GPS.

Hesseldahl is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com.