Nokia's Location and Commerce Business Supplies Pan-European Reference Data to Ford Motor

Nokia (News - Alert) has announced that its Location & Commerce business is supplying modified pan-European reference data to the Ford Motor Company (News - Alert) to enable their Emergency Assistance technology to identify the location of the driver in need of help and the appropriate language needed to alert local emergency service operators. 

The system sends automated voice messages as well as co-ordinates directly with the local emergency service operators and that too in their own language. Since the calls are not routed via a third party call centre, the system saves crucial time during emergency, according to company officials.

With the help of modified geofences in the Nokia Location & Commerce reference data, Ford’s new system identifies the correct local language. Company officials said that the language based geofencing defines both country borders and regional sub-divisions which effect language. Thanks to the system, a notification is sent to the local emergency services about the accident and the location of the vehicle.

Moreover, to ensure that the emergency calls are generated as quickly as possible, advanced storage and compression technology was used to produce a significantly smaller footprint. Company official said that with the minimum amount of data to process, the system can respond quickly and the Nokia Location & Commerce solution, combining several new techniques, compresses the file without losing any valuable data.

“We are confident that solutions enabling fast and efficient connection to emergency services could help speed up response times and are delighted that Ford selected our data as part of the development of its Emergency Assistance technology,” said Bruno Bourguet, senior vice president of sale and business development for Nokia Location & Commerce.  

Emergency Assistance will be free-of-charge as part of the SYNC platform -- already found on over four million cars in the U.S. -- and it makes its first European appearance on the B-MAX which is expected to go on sale later this year, according to company officials.

Nokia’s Location & Commerce business, including NAVTEQ (News - Alert) Maps products, the Nokia Location Platform as well as Nokia Maps, aims to build and monetize unique location experiences for great mobile products, as well as the navigation industry, the automotive market and government and business solutions.

Recently, Nokia introduced new Asha smartphones. Currently, there are 10 Asha devices available in more than 130 markets.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.