EGPS Forum Created by Motorola and CSR to Enhance GPS on Cell Phones

Today Motorola and CSR announced their intent to create a new open industry forum bent on improving GPS technologies for mobile devices. The new entity is to be called the EGPS forum, meaning Enhanced Global Positioning System. The group will focus on improvements to GPS that will allow it to work more quickly and accurately with a mobile device - even when used indoors. The two companies said that one of the first technologies the EGPS Forum will work on is a hybrid system that combines the normal satellite signals with advanced timing measurements made on a phone's cellular network connections to improve the quality of location data for cell phones.

CSR and Motorola have said that the new EGPS forum will be open to "a broad array of participants from the telecommunications industry" that will include handset makers, LBS companies, network infrastructure manufacturers, as well as carriers. The group should have the initial procedures for field testing and performance benchmarking in place during the first half of this year.