The MapFactory, a Walnut Creek, Calif., company specializing in adding value to imaging and mapping products, has developed a product that could impact the way wireless carriers build out their networks.
The company brings together vast amounts of information such as the heights of buildings and trees, land elevations and even demographics, and puts them onto mapping software. The company hopes to capitalize on carriers’ need for detailed information that can help them determine where to place their antennas.
To get the information it needs, the company must photograph the earth so that each photo overlaps, giving it a “stereo” image of the ground. The company then uses that data to extract information such as building heights, which it painstakingly places into maps by entering each point of the structure by hand.
Don Walklet, founder and chief executive officer of The MapFactory, said he believes his company has found the most efficient way to compile the vast amount of information using an assembly line, or “factory” approach.
“We’re taking sometimes fairly esoteric or arcane technology and streamlining it to come up with information,” said Walklet. “We’re doing things others know how to do but haven’t done for one reason or another.”
The result is one-foot resolution, color maps, beginning with major metropolitan areas, that can be merged digitally with street maps and other information.
Walklet founded The MapFactory two years ago after being approached by Mohamed Al Fayed, owner of the Harrods department store in London. Al Fayed, now a principal investor in the company, hoped to use Walklet’s experience in satellite technology applications to help in his oil and mining exploration efforts.
Walklet said the company spent the better part of its first year focusing on Al Fayed’s project, while beginning to develop the foundation for commercial products it hoped to release later. Walklet said his research turned up telecommunications as the number one vertical market for such a product based on the amount of new wireless licenses the Federal Communications Commission was awarding and the potential need for more detailed information.
“You don’t just throw out a bunch of antennas and pray,” said Walklet. “You need a method to define where to put those towers and antennas.”
Until now, carriers have relied on drive testing to determine where antenna sites should be placed, said Walklet.
The company’s core product-AlphaMap-combines four layers of information that can be used across a variety of industries. The company also developed a product specifically designed for the wireless telecommunications market. AlphaMap Telecom/Wireless is an off-the-shelf desktop mapping product that combines up to nine layers of information.
The layers include: high-resolution aerial imagery; heights and dimensions of structures higher than two stories; bald-earth digital elevation models; canopy digital elevation models, which show the aggregate elevation of vegetation and large structures that can interfere with RF signal propagation; a coverage/clutter layer, which provides information on where antenna sites can and cannot be located; satellite imagery; digital street maps and labels; topographic information; and demographic information.
The layers can be purchased in a stand-alone format or as part of a pre-bundled product, said the company. The MapFactory has completed work on four metro areas and hopes to have 15 finished by January and 100 by the end of next year.
The company’s initial target market is Local Multipoint Distribution Services carriers because they are just beginning their buildouts and their high operating frequencies make signals susceptible to interference from buildings and vegetation. Walklet said he was surprised, however, by the amount of interest the company has received from personal communications services carriers wanting to use the product for optimizing their networks.
“We have had what I would call `explosive’ response to this product,” said Walklet. “We think our timing was good.”
