The Government of India has decided to introduce GPS sets in all vehicles carrying security personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in the country. Initially the GPS sets will be installed in 513 vehicles of the CRPF and later it will be introduced in all vehicles. The ministry has decided to provide 23 mine protective vehicles to the CRPF for counter-insurgency operations. The government has decided to arm its paramilitary forces with hi-tech weapons to fi ght the Naxals and insurgents.
www.asianage.com

Lockheed Martin has upgraded the software processing and modeling for the Air Force’s GPS, enhancing the Air Force’s ability to monitor GPS satellites and improve system accuracy 10-15 percent for users worldwide. The recently completed update, named the Legacy Accuracy Improvement Initiative (L-AII), doubles the amount of navigation data collected and provided to Air Force operators.
www.lockheedmartin.com

Alti-tech Engineering, has announced a rechargeable lithium ion (Li-ion) Power Case for the DeLorme Blue Logger GPS. This case is called GPS Power Case and by enclosing your Blue Logger inside it you can get an increased runtime of upto 600% (from 10 to 60 hours). According to Alti-Tech, placing the Blue Logger inside the case doesn’t have any effect on GPS signal reception.
www.gpsgazette.com

Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O’Toole and Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced that authorities would begin placing electronic ankle bracelets on pre-trial offenders and parolees to track them and to prevent them from committing new crimes. Police say the program, which uses global positioning system technology, does not require legislation. Instead, the department is working with the Massachusetts Probation Service on the initiative, which police say is currently being used on 90 people with good results.
www.boston.com

The Army Adventure Wing, directorate general of military training, Army Headquarters, has announced that their select team is attempting a national hot air balloon record by ascending a height anywhere between 3,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level for 24 hours continuously. The ToughBook CF-18 to be used by the Army Adventure Wing during this expedition is equipped with wireless communication capabilities and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology.
www.efytimes.com

u-blox AG, the Swiss provider of innovative GPS receiver technology, announced the provision of Assisted GPS (“A-GPS”) services that supply instant location information, reducing GPS receivers’ Time To First Fix (“TTFF”) to just a few seconds.
www.wirelessdevnet.com

Despite years of build-up and hype, location based services were still in an early stage of slow growth at the beginning of 2005. From about the year 2000, only a handful of operators worldwide had launched location based services for their enterprise and individual subscribers. However, the recent introduction of 3G network technology in many markets (and
many more to come) coupled with the emphasis on boosting data revenues, it seems like the stage is finally set for widespread rollouts during 2006 and 2007. This analysis is backed up by the results of a recent survey carried out by Genasys in the Latin American telecoms market.
www.genasys.com

IBM has collaborated with two universities to develop several speechenabled Web applications for mobile phones. The MobileU program allows students to ask “What time is the next bus coming?” into their cell phones. GPS devices inside the buses use General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) to transmit their location to servers on campus and ultimately to students’ mobile phones to tell them how long they have to wait.
www.computerworld.com

GPS chip sales are soaring as costs fall to more affordable levels. The change is due largely to the development of low-cost GPS chips. GPS chips for most products have fallen in recent years from $50 to less than $10, and the cost for GPS in cell phones is even less. Analysts say that Qualcomm now spends only about $2 to add GPS capabilities to its cell phone chip sets.
http://reed-electronics.com

GrameenPhone Ltd. has selected MapInfo to implement a location intelligence solution to monitor and optimise the performance of its GSM radio network across Bangladesh. GrameenPhone continually strives toward providing better network coverage and quality for its customer base. GrameenPhone increased its network coverage from 55 percent to more than 95 percent of the population within last year. As part of this initiative, the Radio Planning Department at GrameenPhone needed a spatial solution to assist them in monitoring and managing the mobile network quality and coverage across the country.
www.mapinfo.com