Mariam Sorond, CEO of NextNav, reveals the company's solutions for geolocation. While GPS has served billions globally, it has limitations such as vulnerability to outages and poor indoor accuracy. NextNav addresses these challenges with a backup network and enhanced indoor positioning, crucial for sectors like emergency services and national security. Their system rides on the 5G network, providing stronger, more secure signals to support critical applications in various industries.
As NextNav continues to innovate, it’s not just about improving horizontal positioning; the company is reshaping vertical positioning systems, unlocking new use cases such as indoor navigation, AI-powered solutions, and precision for emergency responders. These advancements promise to enhance not only public safety but also everyday tasks like navigating complex spaces. With regulatory approval on the horizon, NextNav’s technology could redefine how the world connects, navigates, and secures its most vital systems.
Steve Saunders:
Welcome back to FNTV at MWC25. I'm Steve Saunders and I'm delighted to welcome Mariam Sorond, CEO of NextNav, to the studio here opposite the führer. It's great to see you Mariam.
Mariam Sorond:
Delighted to be here. Thank you, Steve.
Steve Saunders:
You have a very interesting proposition based around geolocation. What is it?
Mariam Sorond:
It's basically signals from satellites that we all use. 4 billion users use GPS. There's also other GNSS systems to navigate our way, water supplies, emergency services, widely used.
Steve Saunders:
So what are you bringing to the GPS table, as it were? What makes NextNav's offering different?
Mariam Sorond:
Well, first of all, it's a great service that's used worldwide, but it needs a couple things. One of them, it needs a backup and resilient network because it's single-sourced. So if there's outage or if there's any vulnerability, that is disaster for any nation. Not only from a national security perspective, but economic value of couple billion dollars a day for the United States. And I'm sure-
Steve Saunders:
If GPS failed.
Mariam Sorond:
If GPS failed, right. It's on our water supply, power grids, banking, financial systems. So that's one. The second one is that GPS has some limitations. It doesn't work well indoors, again, very inherent to satellites. And basically it's really important to have indoor positioning as well. So it's a complement as well to what GNSS systems over-
Steve Saunders:
So you're describing a redundant network. GPS isn't redundant today?
Mariam Sorond:
It is not.
Steve Saunders:
I did not know that.
Mariam Sorond:
Oh, no? Isn't that amazing?
Steve Saunders:
That's a fairly interesting and slightly worrying thought. I wonder if you can give me an example of how having a NextNav service underlying or backing up GPS would be useful for existing services, maybe public sector or something like that?
Mariam Sorond:
So basically our solution is riding on 5G, and 5G is a terrestrial network. Terrestrial signals are strong, they're very resilient to jamming, spoofing, things that we see daily occurrences of with respect to GPS and other positioning satellites worldwide. We have basically implemented a very large scale solution. It rides on the coattails of a 5G network, so it'll be global, and it's very innovative.
Steve Saunders:
It sounds amazing. Does it exist yet, or do you have to see regulatory changes in order for you to bring a service online?
Mariam Sorond:
That's our first step. The regulators care worldwide, not about airwaves and spectrum, but also of course national security. So our proposal in the United States is being considered by the FCC to basically allow our spectrum to be used by 5G operators. And once it is, then we can actually partner with the 5G operator to build the network. And then we use the PRS signal, which is a positioning reference signal, of 5G to deliver positioning and timing.
Steve Saunders:
Is there any reason why they wouldn't let you do that?
Mariam Sorond:
I can't see of one reason. We have a great regulator. We have a new administration in the United States. They care about national security. We have our leader, Chairman Brendan Carr-
Steve Saunders:
Oh, wow.
Mariam Sorond:
Of the FCC here at the show talking today, and I think these are important issues for them.
Steve Saunders:
What advantages, or advancements, or innovations can we expect from NextNav, in particular regarding this concept of vertical positioning systems? Perhaps you could explain what they are first.
Mariam Sorond:
Yeah, absolutely. So with GPS or other GNSS systems, they're really good at horizontal positioning. So which floor of the building you're at, that's a little bit more complicated. It's indoor, so it needs indoor sort of solutions for it. And it opens up a door of actually applications. First of all, all positioning is data-driven, so we can use the power of AI.
We could actually unleash a lot of use cases that are not only future-looking, think factory floors who need precise indoors, think buildings who need precise indoor, or think national security issues of emergency responders trying to respond to life and death situations to a 911 call, or just think simple things. I was hanging out in a Plaça de Catalunya yesterday, beautiful, beautiful. I was trying to find a walking path and it was hard, it threw me off. So imagine solving some of our everyday problems and also the future of what it could potentially do with 3D positioning and using AI.
Steve Saunders:
Fantastic. Really exciting, interesting, innovative. It's great to see you here at MWC25.
Mariam Sorond:
Thank you, Steve. It's wonderful. Thank you for the opportunity.