mobloc8

From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

This article looks at a few applications to track children (and cars) using GPS-enabled mobile phones. As the reporter points out, these types of applications always hit up against the “Big Brother” issue - people simply don’t like the idea that they’re being tracked everywhere they go.

Child experts and parents agree that while such devices may temporarily solve reckless driving and help keep children safe, they do not address the underlying parent-child trust issue. Parents must stay involved in their children’s lives and maintain an open channel of communication to keep children safe, said Dr. Joanne Kaufman, professor of sociology at the University of Miami.

“Such devices facilitate, but don’t replace, actual parenting,” Kaufman said. “If the parent is always intervening, the kid is never going to learn how to be independent.”

What do you think? Under what circumstances do you think it’s OK to track your teenager’s location? Would your kids agree with you?

From MSMobiles.com.

In this article we present “quick map” - a location based service at 3G operator “3″ in UK - that allows you to find out where you are at the moment (sometimes in the night and in the middle of nowhere it can be problematic). It is kind of “GPS location finding” but without GPS - usually network calculates your location based on triangulation.

As the articles points out, non-GPS location determination methods have benefits and drawbacks. They can be faster than GPS to provide a location, you don’t need to carry a separate GPS unit around with you, and location can be determined anywhere that you have network coverage (including indoors, where GPS falls down). The downside is that you’ll be charged for each location query, and depending upon the technology used the accuracy is often worse than GPS.

From Kansas City infoZine.

“Cell phones are immensely useful in reporting crimes, fires, and other emergency situations, but only if our first responders can pinpoint the caller’s location. We are working to expand wireless enhanced 911 service throughout the state and the individuals appointed to the board will play a critical role in this effort,” Governor Sebelius said.

…

The Wireless Enhanced 911 Advisory Board serves as an Advisory Board to the Secretary of Administration with regard to the Wireless Enhanced 911 Grant Fund. The fund provides grants to eligible municipalities’ public safety answering points for implementation of wireless enhanced 911 service; purchase of equipment, upgrades, and modifications solely to process the data elements of wireless enhanced 911 service; and maintenance and license fees for such equipment and training of personnel to operate such equipment.

I just came across an interesting blog on “LBS & tourism through the eyes of a postgrad marketing student in NZ”. In the words of Clara Leung, the blog’s author:

I’m a Master of Commerce (Marketing) student at The University of Auckland. Currently writing my thesis on location-based services and tourism, which is pretty much what this blog is all about! It’s bound to get mixed up in mobile tech, m-commerce, marketing & other random (but related) topics, though. Enjoy!

In his blog, Om Malik, senior writer for Business 2.0 magazine, gives his opinion on the Vonage VoIP E911 case.

Hopefully all the media attention this case is getting will help pave the way to allow VoIP providers to access E911 PSAPs.

From News-Miner.

Fairbanks, Alaska, is finding that even charging the maximum allowable surcharge of 75c per phone line and wireless phone, they come up short in funding E911 services. They want to change the law to allow a maximum surcharge of $2 per phone line or cell phone so that the E911 service can be fully funded.

Currently, the funding shortfall is made up by the city’s taxpayers, mostly through higher property taxes and to a lesser extent alcohol and other taxes.

From SpatialNews.

Redlands, California- ESRI, the global leader and provider of geographic information system (GIS) software and commercial Web services, congratulates LOC-AID Technologies LLC for receiving the Peer-to-Peer/Find Me application category award in the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge. The LBS Challenge was a location-based services (LBS) application development contest held in conjunction with the CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association). Within the Peer-to-Peer/Find Me application category, LOC-AID was selected among three semifinalists by a panel of 11 judges representing wireless carriers, mobile device manufacturers, wireless infrastructure providers, and information technology leaders.

From RCR Wireless News.

The FCC granted 32 whole or partial waivers for rural wireless carrier enhanced 911 Phase II obligations, and denied or dismissed eight other requests. That makes a total of 175 whole or partial waivers for rural carriers over the past nine years.

A big problem for rural carriers is that they don’t have the density of phone towers to make network-based triangulation techniques feasible.

From BusinessWire.

TechnoCom Corporation(R), a leading provider of wireless location Operations Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS), today announced that Triton PCS, a leading operator of wireless services, has purchased the LocatePredict(TM) platform to optimize the deployment of its wireless location infrastructure.

The optimization and planning software will allow Triton PCS to cost effectively deploy its network-based E911 location technologies to yield the optimal accuracy performance based on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) E911 mandate.

LocatePredict is a wireless location system design and planning platform for GSM and TDMA that supports a range of network and handset-based location technologies including TDOA, AOA, E-OTD and RF signature systems, as well as hybrids of these technologies. It provides the user with easy-to-grasp graphical predictions and quantitative statistics based on rigorous models and extensive verification through empirical field testing.

E-OTD Whitepaper from ZDNet.

E-OTD is one of a small number of location determination technologies adopted by US cellular operators to meet the FCC E-911 mandate. In E-OTD, the mobile handset or device performs the calculation to determine its location based on signals received from cellular base stations. However, those operators in the US who have adopted E-OTD in their GSM networks have so far been unable to meet the FCC’s location performance requirements and have been granted more time to make E-OTD work.

Even this extra time may not be enough, because neither the cellular operators nor their technology suppliers appear to have identified the root cause(s) of E-OTD’s problems, and hence there is no timescale or budget to fix them. AT&T Wireless has already raised the possibility that even the extension which the FCC has granted it may not be enough. E-OTD’s problems are now causing alarm in the emergency services community, and there are calls from some bodies for the technology to be scrapped. Meanwhile, in Europe no operators have plans for a full implementation of E-OTD in their networks.

From Engadget.

Vonage is being sued for deceptive trade practices by the Texas state attorney general because their VoIP service has 911 calling disabled by default, and doesn’t make it clear enough that it needs to be activated by the purchaser.

This case is a flow-on from the recent shooting incident where a girl tried to call 911 after her parents were shot during a home invasion, but her call didn’t go through because the family had a Vonage VoIP phone without 911 calling enabled. Her parents survived the attack, luckily.

Full details of the suit are posted at the Texas Attorney General web site.

It’s a thorny issue, but more work needs to be done to get support for VoIP calls and tracing for 911 emergency services.

More coverage from the LA Times.

What are your thoughts? Is Vonage in the wrong? Are they being deceptive, or are their customer warnings and information adequate?

SymbianOne has a nice roundup piece from the CTIA Wireless 2005 event. Location-related items include:

• Route 66 turns your Symbian UIQ mobile phone into a wireless navigation system
• TomTom USA announced TomTom Rider, a mobile navigation system for motorbikes and scooters
• Syniverse has a GPS-based pet tracking service
• Telcontar demonstrated navigation, tracking and asset management applications
• Telmap (makers of phone-based navigation services) announced the opening of their US office
• Televigation announced a new version of their phone-based navigation, tracking and dispatching solution
• Wherify demonstrated the Wherifone G550, the world’s smallest GSM/Enhanced GPS phone
• MapInfo announced a new version of MapX Mobile (v5.0)

From CNET News.com.

Last Mile Communications has ideas about a range of services it could provide from wireless access points mounted on lampposts throughout the UK. Such services include wireless broadband access, location services, emergency services, and information services utilising data stored locally in each lamppost. It costs around £500 to hook up each lamppost.

Last Mile’s plan doesn’t involve any sort of interaction with the telephone network. That could be a good thing, as they aren’t reliant on cooperation from telcos, but it also means that their business will have trouble selling its services once mobile phone location technologies and 3G data services become more widespread.

The MobileIn Wireless Emergency Services Tutorial covers the legislation, standards and technologies used for providing mobile location information to emergency services in both the US and Europe.

This MobileIn Mobile Positioning tutorial covers the technologies that can be used to locate a mobile phone within the network.

Network-Based:

• SS7
• network based PDE
• angle of arrival (AOA)
• time of arrival (TOA, TDOA, U-TDOA)
• radio propagation techniques
• hybrid methods

Handset-Based:

• SIM toolkit
• enhanced observed time difference (E-OTD)
• global positioning system (GPS)