Intersec embeds Passive Subcell into its fast data analytics platform

A major step forward towards the market's state of the art

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Intersec (https://www.intersec.com/en/), leading provider of fast data solutions today announces the 2017.4 release of its Fast Data Analytics platform, improving further product spatial resolution thanks to the passive Subcell feature.

The company's unique approach of location is to combine traditional active queries with passive collection of signalization traffic –retrieving the flow of signaling location data directly from the network. This orchestration of these two methods allows mobile operators to continuously locate millions of subscribers while actively polling only a few thousands, thereby avoiding extra load on the network. Thanks to this approach Intersec has been constantly bridging the gap between real-time and mass-scale location.

The company has also been working on improving location accuracy. Working only at the cell level has always been a limitation for operators, as cells can sometimes reach several kilometers in size, preventing them from developing more robust and granular use cases.

18 months ago, Intersec felt Subcell location would become a new standard for many applications such as advertising, contextualization or lawful intercept. To maintain its leadership in these areas, the company has dedicated an R&D team to embed passive SubCell collection.

Indeed, these methods represent a technical challenge, as they require retrieving data from the radio layer of the network – a lower level. Therefore, Intersec has developed an original approach, extracting just the necessary information from the RAN (Radio Access Network) through a centralized equipment. The high level of processing performance ensures near real-time positioning for all devices. When no signaling is available for some lapse of time, a mechanism called orchestration actively triggers an updated position from the network. Such information is mixed with all networks available (including Wi-Fi) to limit the number of blind spots for any individual device. Performance depends on the network topology but observed results show it can reach down to 100 meters accuracy in urban areas.

Combining real-time and mass scale for accurate location reports offers new perspectives to service providers: the granularity they have been dreaming of for 25 years, more efficiency in Security applications, more precise studies in dense areas for Smart Cities, on-line visualization of crowd densities and audience real-time management for billboard advertisers, to name a few.

This release represents a major technological step for the company and it was given an enthusiastic reception from the market. It is the last stone to an end-to-end solution, freeing Intersec from network planning providers whose focus on quality of service issues do not necessarily meet the Marketing needs. This feature is the foundation of a new roadmap: offering a platform that enables data extraction and processing from end-to-end allows refined algorithms, data reconciliation with vector maps, etc.  to enhance location insights and bring more value.

Jean-Marc Coïc, Chief Technology Officer of Intersec, declares today: "Developing SubCell as a native feature of our platform was quite a bet, but the result is beyond our expectations. It was worth working hard given the technical advance this brings us. The feedback from our customers is excellent and almost all location-related projects from prospects demand it. It really is a unique capability and allows us to stay ahead of the market. Our strategy pays off."

About Intersec

Intersec designs innovative software enabling operators to leverage their network Big Data. Our disruptive technology crunches and consolidates huge amounts of data coming from heterogeneous network equipment and IT, and turns them into actionable insights in real-time.