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From PalmInfoCenter

The Treo 650 looks like a great phone/PDA combo. Various reviewers seem quite impressed with the bundled software and its ease of use. Nice to see another A-GPS enabled phone on the market, too:

The GSM Treo has a quad band wireless radio that uses the 850/900/1800/1900 MHz frequencies. The CDMA model uses a digital dual-band CDMA/1xRTT radio operating on the 800/1900 MHz bands. The GSM model also support high speed EDGE networks with data speeds averaging up to 135 kilobits per second (kbps). It also features E911 compliance with a built in GPS chip that is solely used for the enhanced E911 emergency location service.

One issue seems to be the availability of WiFi drivers, which is a disappointment. According to the article, prices start at USD$449, and range up to USD$699 for the unlocked GSM model.

If you have a Treo 650, please do post your comments below. Feel free to also post links to other reviews and/or good places to buy them.

Join us at the first O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference to explore the emerging consumer and enterprise ecosystems around location-aware technologies–ecosystems that increasingly impact the way we work and play. Location-determining technologies like GPS, RFID, WLAN, cellular networks and networked sensors enable an ever-growing array of capabilities from local search, mapping, and business analytics to enterprise integration, commercial applications, and software infrastructure.

Read more at the Where 2.0 site.

This sounds like a fantastic opportunity to see what other companies are doing in the location marketplace, what’s happening in various countries, what’s coming down the pipe in the next few years, and what the issues are going to be, including security and privacy concerns.

Let’s hope that IT Conversations makes the audio available, like they have for several other recent conferences, for those of us who can’t make it there in person.

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.

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 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?

From The Business Journal (Kansas City).

Kansas has a system in place whereby $0.25 is charged to every wireless service account per month, and the money raised is distributed to smaller counties to help pay for the equipment, licensing, training, etc required to provide enhanced 911 services. Grants are reviewed and awarded by the Kansas Wireless Enhanced 911 Advisory Board.

From America’s Network.

The FCC appears to be standing firm on their Dec 31, 2005 deadline for wireless carriers to implement E911 solutions.

Sprint, Nextel Communications and Verizon Wireless are pursuing handset-based solutions, while Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile USA are pursuing network-based solutions.

According to NENA:

• 71.5% of the 3,135 counties in the US have implemented Phase I
• 33.8% of counties have implemented Phase II
• 73.4% of the 6,166 public safety answering points (PSAPs) have implemented Phase I
• 40.5% of PSAPs have implemented Phase II

There are still issues with getting Tier 3 carriers (mostly rural) to meet the deadline. The biggest obstacle appears to be cost. Several groups of Tier 3 carriers have banded together into the “Tier III Coalition” to lobby for exemption from the FCC requirements.