Ordnance Survey – Great Britain's national mapping agency

Firm creates SIM-GPS product

01 May 2007

A GPS provider has unveiled a new product that can fit onto a mobile phone's SIM card slot.

BlueSky Positioning's new GPS product – including its antenna – can fit within and work from a normal-sized mobile telephone in what is a groundbreaking move within the industry.

The Register quotes Risto Savolainen, the firm's CEO, as explaining: ‘Most antennas are designed in free space, to have nothing around them.

‘We started out knowing that there would be metal all around us. That's our secret – how the antenna works; but when we take away the battery, take the SIM out of the phone, the signal is no longer there."

The system is currently at prototype stage and the firm says that it is working with SIM manufacturers to start production. It is hoping to have production samples in circulation by this July.

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