Virginia, US, 30th June: MetCom and NextNav today announced a commercial agreement for the nationwide deployment of 3D geolocation services in Japan, starting with the rollout of the Pinnacle vertical location service. 

MetCom will start commercial operation in October 2022 following the successful pilot in Tokyo this past year. The Pinnacle service will first be deployed in the densely populated Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas, with a plan to expand coverage to major cities across Japan in 2023. Pinnacle will enhance the experience of geolocation services from two dimensions to include a vertical third dimension, and will serve unmet needs in both public and commercial sectors.

This partnership will be the first large-scale commercial deployment of NextNav’s Pinnacle technology outside of the United States and leverages MetCom and NextNav’s deep history and management expertise in the globalization of wireless industry standards and technologies. NextNav Pinnacle’s precise vertical positioning is available across more than 4,400 US cities and towns, and currently in use by emergency services across the public safety ecosystem as well as consumer, IoT, gaming, and construction applications in the United States.

MetCom and NextNav are additionally working to enable TerraPoiNT’s resilient back-up GPS service in Japan to further augment these capabilities in the future.

“We are pleased to introduce the Pinnacle vertical location network and service across Japan,” said Hiroki Hirasawa, President of MetCom. “This innovative technology, which provides floor-level vertical location indoors and underground, is critical for a country that has so many individuals living and working in multi-story buildings. We look forward to offering this experience to public safety and emergency services, as well as various industries including data analysis, advertising, gaming and construction, by enhancing user experiences by using geolocation in new ways.”

“We are excited that our commercial agreement with MetCom will bring new geolocation capabilities to a host of life saving applications, as well as gaming, augmented reality and the Metaverse, in a highly urbanized and vertical market such as Japan.” said Ganesh Pattabiraman, CEO and co-founder of NextNav.

The first phase of Pinnacle vertical location deployment in Japan will start in October 2022 with a nationwide urban deployment anticipated in 2023.