Announcing the development, CEO Simon Brown said: “Presence Cells are about capturing data and providing supporting services and value. It’s a completely new breed of small cells with unique capabilities to support an exciting but specific vertical segment’s need.”
The company said the new small cells unlock the capture of presence data and support mobile phone location authentication to enable a range of new solutions including retail analytics, mobile finance and mobile promotions. Beyond the small cells themselves, ip.access also provides the back-end processing to deliver the presence data in a secure and anonymised form, direct to the vertical application provider.
The new Presence Cells are compatible today with more than two billion 3G handsets with no modifications, no specific applications or user configuration required. Variants of Presence Cells are under development to operate within LTE networks.
Dan Rabinovitsj, senior vice president at Qualcomm Atheros, states, “Qualcomm is delighted to collaborate with ip.access in a new area of innovation in the mobile infrastructure segment. By leveraging small cells networks for analytics, big data opportunities are now unfolding for carriers and innovative companies who can deliver a new range of added value services to businesses and consumers."
“The Presence Cells product line allows operators to leverage their existing network assets and infrastructure around SIM identity and subscriber knowledge,” added Brown. “It instantly enables operators to get added return from their network investment and improve its overall value.”
The company said the solutions unlock unique insight into subscriber activity, location, behaviour and profiles to enable new partner-led services and define powerful new value and revenue lines for the mobile operators seeking to enhance their brand and connectivity with subscriber focused transaction services.