mobloc8

If you want to know more about how the FCC’s wireless Enhanced 911 (E911) rules work, the best place to start is at their own web site.

There you’ll find information on previous and upcoming hearings and statements, reports, press releases, waivers and more. They also make available Phase II quarterly reports for most carriers (some carriers are not required to lodge reports), so you can check up how each one is doing in their deployment of E911 services.

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!

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)

This MobileIn tutorial briefly outlines the types of services that might be expected once mobile location infrastructure is deployed:

• geographic information systems (GIS)
• location management function
• location based information
• location based billing
• emergency services (e.g. E911)
• tracking

The palowireless LBS Resource Center is a great place to start if you want to learn more about mobile location technologies. They have good introductory information on the various location technologies, market research reports, event information, job listings, development tools, discussion forums and more.