Airtel and Swift unveil high-precision location service

Airtel Business has announced a strategic partnership with Swift Navigation, a company specialising in precise-positioning technology, to introduce India’s first AI/ML-powered, cloud-based location service, known as the Airtel-Skylark Precise Positioning Service. The service aims to deliver centimetre-level accuracy, offering up to 100 times greater precision than standard Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).

This partnership brings together Swift Navigation’s Skylark platform with Airtel’s extensive pan-India 4G and 5G network infrastructure. The integration is designed to support large-scale, mission-critical, location-based applications by delivering reliable and highly accurate positioning data. The service is expected to benefit a range of sectors including transportation, emergency services, infrastructure, logistics, agriculture, and autonomous systems. By improving the precision of location tracking, it has the potential to significantly enhance operational efficiency, enable faster response times, and support innovations in both urban and rural contexts.

Commenting on the launch, Sharat Sinha, Director and CEO of Airtel Business, noted that precise location data can make a critical difference in complex geographies such as India’s narrow streets and dense neighbourhoods, especially for essential services like emergency response.

He further highlighted that this new technology could play a key role in supporting applications such as autonomous mobility and satellite-based toll collection, in addition to improving overall industrial performance. Holger Ippach, Executive Vice President of Product and Marketing at Swift Navigation, expressed optimism about the collaboration, stating that Swift's partnership with Airtel would help businesses and developers in India adopt precise positioning solutions more seamlessly.

The service is designed to support a broad spectrum of use cases. In transport, it can enable advanced driver-assistance systems and help in the development of fully autonomous vehicles by improving road safety and traffic flow. In mobile and consumer applications, it may provide more accurate navigation, enhance ride-sharing platforms, and improve real-time fitness tracking through better geolocation. In logistics, the technology can facilitate route optimisation, precise fleet management, and more accurate delivery estimations, which is particularly useful in densely populated areas.

The service may also improve railway safety by enabling more precise train positioning, and in agriculture, it can support precision farming techniques by guiding automated equipment for tasks such as seeding, spraying, and irrigation, thereby improving efficiency and sustainability.

In its initial phase, the Airtel-Skylark Precise Positioning Service will cover approximately 35,000 square kilometres in the National Capital Region (NCR), with plans to expand to other parts of the country in subsequent stages. While still in its early days, the partnership represents a significant step forward in the development of AI-based geospatial infrastructure in India and lays the groundwork for more widespread adoption of high-precision location services in the future.