Wayland, MA, USA, December 17, 1998: Deutsche PhoneSat, a German telecommunications and flight control, remote sensing and GIS company, has become a Principal Member in the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC), the international standards organization dedicated to interoperable geoprocessing. As a Principal Member, Deutsche PhoneSat will have a seat on OGC's Management Committee and will help shape the consortium's business plan and its OpenGIS(R) Specification plan and schedule. Participation in OGC will help Deutsche PhoneSat play a role in integrating geographic information and analysis into enterprise information systems and into network-resident spatial information services for a variety of consumer products.David Schell, president of OGC, said, “Deutsche PhoneSat has a vision and a strategy that fit perfectly with OGC's view of how the industry is changing. They help define the synergies between telecommunications, control, and geospatial capabilities. For example, in the next few years we will see car computers, phones, and other Internet devices that know their location. This will open up huge new e-commerce potentials, but the breakthrough will depend on telcos that understand network-resident spatial services.”All telecommunications and telematic companies use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to manage their widely distributed facilities and customer operations, but Deutsche PhoneSat delivers earth imaging, photogrammetry and GIS services to customers in addition to using these services in support of its own operations. Deutsche PhoneSat has an excellent track record in delivering complex high technology systems such as air traffic control and satellite-based public and private communications networks. Through its licensed national telephone network operations in Eastern and Western countries, its work with NATO standards, and its multi-partner integration projects, Deutsche PhoneSat has gained considerable knowledge about interoperability, which is OGC's area of concern. Deutsche PhoneSat delivered to EUROCONTROL, for example, the first phase – the Black Sea region – of “Route South”, a project to unite and modernize the main flight routes and diverse national air traffic systems along the important flight corridor from Southeast Europe through Southwest Asia and into South Asia.Deutsche PhoneSat joins GTE Internetworking, Byers Engineering, Bell South and other companies in OGC's Telecom Special Interest Group (SIG) who have a keen interest in ensuring that the OpenGIS Specifications result in open software interfaces and common layered software services that meet all the requirements of the telecommunications industry.Deutsche PhoneSat is an innovative high tech company in the field of applied telecommunications and GIS technologies with customers and operations in Germany, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics, Asia, and the Americas. The company offers a wide range of systems and services involving satellite communications, earth imaging, navigation, air traffic control, geospatial analysis, and multimodal voice, video and data communications systems.The Open GIS Consortium is a not-for-profit industry consortium dedicated to the widespread use of interoperable geoprocessing throughout the world's information infrastructures.– end –“