Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The company, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2008, recorded an 80 per cent increase in revenues last year, a rate that CEO Seppe Cassettari anticipates will continue for the “foreseeable future.”

Operating in what most ordinary web-users would consider the cutting-edge of technology, The GeoInformation Group provides aerial imagery to Google Earth and similar online mapping services.

But it is the company’s suite of innovative new data products that is driving the new wave of growth, providing customers across a range of industry sectors with valuable information above and beyond two-dimensional aerial imagery.

In particular, it is demand from telecoms companies, using the company’s ‘added-value’ datasets to design their next-generation 4G networks, that is providing the boost to The GeoInformation Group’s top line.

Cassettari explained: “Mobile operators such as Vodafone are using our height data for buildings to ensure that they get complete cover for their 4G networks in urban areas.

“It enables them to calculate how much signal they need to get into alleyways in Central London, for example.”
4G networks will be able to provide voice, data and streamed multimedia to users on an “anytime, anywhere” basis, and at higher data rates than previous generations.

“We believe that the continued convergence of fixed-mobile services will continue to drive demand for that kind of data.
“As more and more people use their handsets to access mobile services from within buildings, it is becoming increasingly important for operators to provide them with a high quality of service,” Cassettari added.

The GeoInformation Group was formed in 1998 following an MBO led by Cassettari and Alun Jones, from publishers of the FT, the Pearson Group. That transaction was funded by the company’s current bank, Lloyds TSB Commercial.
The GeoInformation Group is one of Europe’s leading providers of high-resolution aerial imagery and geographic information products and services.

These include the Cities Revealed portfolio of modern and historic aerial imagery, a range of value added information such as 3D building data, land use and thermal images and the training and consultancy division of the company – Training4GIS.