Wow, E911 Has Finally Come Along
from the never-thought-we'd-see-the-day dept
For years, there's been talk of how 911 service needed to include the ability for a mobile phone user's location to be sent to call centers when they made an emergency call. The implementation has taken ages, thanks to toothless government "crackdowns" and constantly backpedaling deadlines. Another big reason was that tax money intended to upgrade call centers to be able to receive the info was instead spent on winter boots and ballpoint pens. So it was with some surprise that we saw 95 percent of the US population now lives in an area with 911 call centers that can receive their location from a wireless phone, and over 90 percent of individual call centers in the US have the ability. That's quite a milestone for a program that looked for a long time like it was going nowhere; hopefully implementation of the next 911 upgrade won't take nearly as long.
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Filed Under: e911
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this is a very good news
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911
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Re: 911
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Re: 911
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Yes they forced VoIP providers to do it in a year..
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Re: Yes they forced VoIP providers to do it in a year..
For a Cell Phone's CURRENT location to be reported you need to triangulate via the towers it is talking to (the original method) and guess at the location OR require the customer to have a Handset that has a GPS capability built in. The GPS-in-Handsets has taken time and the triangulation method needed updating to the support at the tower.
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Re: Re: Yes they forced VoIP providers to do it in a year..
Umm, you mean the telcos didn't know where there towers were or that the towers somehow kept moving around on them?
For a Cell Phone's CURRENT location to be reported you need to triangulate via the towers...
Yep, see what I wrote above.
OR require the customer to have a Handset that has a GPS capability built in.
A technology that has been available for quite a while now.
The GPS-in-Handsets has taken time and the triangulation method needed updating to the support at the tower.
And both could have been done in the same 12 months given the VoIP carriers to upgrade their systems but the telcos have been given preferential treatment by the government, as usual. Of course the telcos have been providing the government with warrantless wiretaps in return. Scratching each other's backs, as the saying goes.
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I wouldn't break out the champagne just yet....
* They have to REQUEST if from the carrier.
* The carrier has to be able to provide the data.
The first one is very easy; the second, not so much...
There are several different way a carrier can attempt to determine location and they all have advantages and disadvantages:
A-GPS - The preferred method for Verizon, Sprint and other CDMA carriers works great when you're outside, not so well in a building (GPS doesn't penetrate walls), AND the phone must have a GPS chip in it. Now ouy all are going to say "All CDMA phones have a GPS in them now" NOW is the operative word, GPS didn't start showing up in CDMA handsets until 2002, so any handset prior to that time (and you would be amazed at the number of those still in operation) will not have that technology available.
UTDOA - The method used by AT&T, T-Mobile and other GSM carriers. This works great in areas that have sufficient coverage for signals to reach enough cell sites, not so good in more sparsely populated areas.
The bottom line is that even though the 911 centers can recieve the data, statistically speaking, carriers are barely meeting E911 requirements of accuracy within 300 meters and in large expanses of land are not able to meet it at all.
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GPS and Buildings
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GPS indoors
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You privacy freaks make my teeth itch. Anything that might actually help people might "invade my freakish privacy so no one knows I stop at the porn emporium every day at lunch and after work. I don't want anyone to know my perversions!"
I think people like you should get a phone that doesn't have GPS, cannot dial 911 and have your number recorded so no one responds to your call. Oh ya, you probably use call block to "protect your privacy" so no one gets your number in the first place.
So stick your idiotic head in the sand and stop blocking safety measures that will do NOTHING but help save lives - hopefully not yours, but what the hell.
Freak.
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