The positioning industry has historically been dominated by satellite-based systems — GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou provide the foundation for most location services worldwide. But satellite positioning has well-known limitations: poor indoor performance, metre-level accuracy in many urban environments, and significant battery drain on mobile devices. Ericsson is now making a serious push to address these gaps with a new suite of 5G-native location services that could reshape how enterprises think about positioning infrastructure.
Announced in early 2026, Ericsson’s 5G Advanced location services deliver sub-10 centimetre outdoor accuracy using Real-Time Kinematics technology and sub-one metre indoor precision through integrated indoor positioning solutions — all running natively on 5G Standalone networks without requiring additional sensors, overlay infrastructure, or device-side applications.
Why network-based positioning matters
Traditional positioning approaches face a fundamental architectural limitation: they rely on signals from satellites orbiting roughly 20,000 kilometres above the Earth’s surface. In open-sky conditions, this works well enough. But inside buildings, in dense urban canyons, underground, or in industrial facilities, satellite signals degrade rapidly or disappear entirely. This is precisely where many of the highest-value positioning use cases exist — warehouse automation, hospital asset tracking, manufacturing floor logistics, and indoor navigation.
Previous attempts to solve indoor positioning have typically involved deploying separate infrastructure: Bluetooth beacons, ultra-wideband anchors, WiFi fingerprinting systems, or dedicated sensor networks. Each of these adds cost, complexity, and a separate technology stack that needs to be maintained independently of the primary communications network.
Ericsson’s approach embeds positioning as a core capability of the 5G network itself. If a facility already has 5G coverage — which an increasing number of factories, hospitals, ports, and campuses do — then positioning becomes available as a network function rather than a separate deployment. This is a significant architectural simplification for enterprises that need both connectivity and location services.
The accuracy gap is closing
Sub-10 centimetre outdoor accuracy is notable because it brings network-based positioning into the range previously reserved for survey-grade GNSS receivers and RTK correction services. For applications like autonomous vehicle guidance, precision agriculture, and drone operations, this level of accuracy opens up use cases that were previously impractical without specialised equipment.
Indoor sub-metre accuracy, while less precise than what ultra-wideband systems can achieve, is sufficient for the majority of enterprise use cases: tracking assets across a warehouse floor, monitoring personnel in a hospital, managing equipment across a manufacturing facility, or enforcing geofencing policies across a logistics campus.
The combination of indoor and outdoor positioning within a single unified system is arguably more significant than the raw accuracy numbers. Most real-world operations span both environments — a package moves from an outdoor loading dock to an indoor sorting facility, a patient transfers from an ambulance to a hospital ward, an autonomous vehicle transitions from a public road to an indoor parking structure. Seamless handover between indoor and outdoor positioning without switching between separate technology systems eliminates a longstanding operational pain point.
What this means for the positioning market
Ericsson is positioning this offering as a monetisation opportunity for mobile operators — enabling them to sell precision location as a service to enterprise customers across manufacturing, healthcare, automotive, public safety, and drone operations. The business model shifts positioning from a device-side capability to a network-side service, with operators acting as positioning infrastructure providers rather than just connectivity providers.
For the broader geospatial and positioning industry, the trajectory is clear: 5G networks are becoming positioning infrastructure in their own right, not just communications pipes. As 5G Standalone deployments expand globally, the installed base of network-based positioning infrastructure will grow in parallel — potentially creating a ubiquitous indoor-outdoor positioning layer that complements rather than replaces satellite-based GNSS.
The competitive implications for traditional positioning technology providers — from GNSS receiver manufacturers to indoor positioning system vendors — will become clearer as enterprise adoption scales through 2026 and beyond.