Once again new technologies are foreseen and new horizons are emerging from these innovations. This time it's about integrating A-GPS positioning technologies to SIM cards for more affordable and maybe more accurate positioning technologies. Such an overwhelming task has been taken on by Sagem and BlueSky Positioning, which believe they have come up with a solution to this issue that has been left unsolved for about a decade now.

This project has been embraced long ago by the wireless industry, but, when it was time for the results, nobody was satisfied. Location-based services were performing much under the expectation rate and the situation was not improving.

The Global Account Marketing manager at Sagem Orga, Francoise Blanchard, made this statement for the public: "The SIM is entering a new era where it can now be considered as a real service platform and a valuable device; the A-GPS enabled SIM card will reshape the way SIM cards are perceived by MNOs and end-users."

Then, Risto Savolainen, BlueSky Positioning CEO, replied: "We're delighted to be working with Sagem Orga to bring our exciting technology to market. [...] Since unveiling our technology concept to the world last year, mobile operators serving more than 1.8 billion subscribers have approached us to learn more. This announcement takes our patented technology out of the lab and puts it into the hands of millions of consumers around the world."

To build your own perspective on how this technology works, you should know that Sagem Orga and BlueSky Positioning are going to integrate a property antenna and a GPS receiver in the SIM card, thus offering mobile operators great opportunities to create very low-cost applications, no software or hardware changes required. Should this plan materialize, the GPS systems will come even cheaper and will probably be more accurate.