July 19th 2007 Quote in the New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/technology/circuits/19basics.html?pagewanted=2&fta=y
The Current Status of E911 - Our 11/7/05 Article in Directions Magazine
See our Latest Quotes in the October 10th Boston Globe about Location-Based Services
See our recent quotes on Wireless Privacy in the January 2005 Popular Mechanics - Page 61
See Our Recently Published Articles On RFID in ComputerWorld: http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,101791,00.html
in RFID Journal:
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1648/1/82/
in Directions Magazine:
The Strategic Implications of the Wal-Mart RFID Mandate
RFID - Hot Technology with Wide-Ranging Applications
LOCATION-BASED SERVICES
It's an oldie but a goodie, and I've seen little reason to change it, unfortunately (with one U.S. Carrier exception!):
It's The (Location-Based) Applications - Stupid!
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Glitches seen in Qualcomm cell chips
 Phones cut out during 911 calls, Verizon says
By Kathryn Balint
STAFF WRITER
June 19, 2004
Across the country, cell phone companies are beginning to roll out a 911-emergency service that can pinpoint a wireless caller's location.
And Qualcomm, the San Diego-based developer of chips for wireless phones, says its technology can locate callers best of all.
There's just one problem: some calls made to 911 using phones with Qualcomm chips cut in and out.
That's what Verizon Wireless has faced this week in areas of the country where 911 calls from wireless phones can be tracked by location. That capability isn't available yet in San Diego County.
But during some emergency calls in those areas, Verizon found that voices on the line cut out every two seconds for the first half minute.
All of the phones involved were equipped with Qualcomm chips.
Verizon spokesman Ken Muché said no calls were dropped and, at least to his knowledge, none of the emergencies was exacerbated by the glitch. It affected an "infinitesimal" number of customers, he said.
Verizon has turned to Qualcomm for help in solving the issue.
It's the same kind of problem Sprint experienced last year with phones using Qualcomm chips.
In both cases, the interruption of voice calls occurred whenever the phones tried to contact a satellite to determine the caller's exact location.
From Qualcomm's point of view, the problem isn't with its chips.
"There's no product problem whatsoever with our chipset," said Bill Davidson, Qualcomm's vice president of investor relations. "What we have is not a situation that was unexpected."
Qualcomm's chips use both satellites and cell towers to pinpoint a wireless caller's location. So a phone using a Qualcomm chip, Davidson said, can track a caller when other phones can't.
The emergency calls that were interrupted typically occurred on the fringes of a 911 calling area.
"If you're in an area of spotty coverage or indoors, where you don't have a full view of a satellite and where other services might not be able to get a location, we can still get a fix," Davidson said.
Even so, Qualcomm last summer introduced a new chip that can carry voice traffic and contact a satellite simultaneously. Phones with the new chip will begin appearing this summer.
Qualcomm has advised other wireless carriers that have experienced disruptions during emergency calls using the company's chips.
"We have worked with carriers around the world – Japan, China, other operators in the United States," Davidson said. "There are settings that can be done in the network that significantly mitigate these issues."
Sprint fixed its problem by "tweaking" the company's network software, said company spokesman Dan Wilinsky. Instead of its phones trying to reach a satellite for a fix on a location for 32 seconds, the phones now attempt to reach a satellite for just 16 seconds.
"Since then, there has been no problem," Wilinsky said.
David H. Williams, chief executive of E911-LBS Consulting in Wilton, Conn., said he thinks the problem might be Qualcomm's chip.
"I don't think it's a network problem," he said. "I think it's, in all likelihood, a handset problem, and from the initial indications, it would be narrowed down to the Qualcomm chip. It has the global positioning system abilities within it."
About 12 percent of the country has the ability to pinpoint the location of a caller who dials 911 on a wireless phone. The federally mandated service has been rolled out in parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Plans are under way to provide it in San Diego County.
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Investor's Business Daily
HEADLINE: Makers Of Child-Tracking Technology Find Big Potential Market; Trackers Evolving, Shrinking; Kidnapping fears also are driving sales of cell phones, which parents give to kids
BYLINE: BY PATRICK SEITZ
Recent high-profile kidnapping cases have raised interest in technology for tracking and locating children.
Privately held Wherify Wireless Inc. soon will begin selling a pendant-sized device that combines a global-positioning-system receiver and cell phone, which kids can wear or put in their pocket.
The company says it's a big advance over its first-generation product - a bulky wristwatch.
Cell phone companies in general are benefiting from child safety concerns as parents buy mobile phones for their children at younger ages than a year or two ago, analysts say.
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer Inc., also has designs on the kid-tracking market with his venture called Wheels of Zeus Inc.
"It's likely to become a crowded space," said Keith Waryas, an analyst with market research firm International Data Corp.
Wherify sold thousands of its first product, but hopes to sell millions of the new product after it becomes available this summer, says Timothy Neher, chief executive of the Redwood Shores, Calif., company.
The new device is about the size of an Oreo cookie. It includes a cell phone with a two-way speaker. It comes with a panic button for calling 911 and a programmable button for calling home. It has "aided GPS" capabilities for locating people inside buildings. Normal GPS devices can't penetrate buildings.
"We've gone light years ahead of where we were," Neher said.
The original Wherify wristwatch bracelets were similar to the first cell phones in that they were brick-sized and expensive, he says.
That first Wherify product can't be used for voice communications, but works as a GPS locator, pager and watch. The company is both a service provider and product maker. That first product now sells for $199, with service plans starting at $20 a month.
"It was more of a technology statement than anything else," Neher said. "Any first-generation product is going to be limited. We sold thousands of them, but not hundreds of thousands. We think with this next generation we can get to millions of units."
Wherify expects the pendant device, called the GPS Locator Phone, to sell for less than $149, with service plans starting at $10 a month. The basic service would include three "locates" -- times when people can go online and locate their child -- and 15 minutes of talk time. More expensive plans would offer more locates and talk time.
Wherify also plans to sell a new version of its watch starting in the fourth quarter or the first quarter next year, Neher says. It will be 80% smaller than the current version, Neher says. The first wristwatch locator weighs 3.9 ounces and has been sold since fall 2002.
The new model, he says, will come with "Dick Tracy stuff" like two-way voice communications and downloadable games. The expected price is $149.
"It targets a market that has a huge amount of potential," said David Hilliard Williams, an analyst with E911-LBS Consulting in Wilton, Conn.
But many parents aren't waiting for special tracking and communications devices for children. They're buying regular cell phones for their kids, analysts say.
A few years ago, the generally accepted minimum age for cell phone usage was 16. Today it has fallen to 12 or even younger, IDC's Waryas says. The Columbine school shootings and frequent Amber alerts have raised awareness about the need to track kids and communicate with them in emergencies, he says.
"It's not just limited to tracking. It's the ability to get in touch with your kids in this increasingly connected society," Waryas said.
Surveys show that people want family tracking capabilities with their cell phone service, Waryas says. At 11 p.m. or midnight, when a kid has missed curfew, parents want to be able to go to their PC, push a button and find out where their child is, he says.
But that sort of service raises legal and privacy concerns, Waryas says. It raises questions such as: Who has rights to access the data, and how long will the data be stored? Can law enforcement agencies get the data, especially given the scope of the Patriot Act?
The child-tracking services raise liability concerns, such as what happens when the device fails to locate a missing child, Williams says.
All cell phones soon will come with a location-tracking ability to meet the Federal Communications Commission's wireless Enhanced 911 requirements. About 60% of cell phones sold today have E911, which can be used to locate a caller in an emergency, Waryas says.
Giving children cell phones is a tough call. He says it can be expensive, especially if they lose or break their phones. Plus, parents want to place limits on usage.
Wozniak says one benefit of his WozNet system is it will be low cost. He envisions his system being used to track small devices on kids, pets and Alzheimer's patients, and also used to track assets like cars and briefcases.
But Wozniak is counting on homeowners and communities to put in place a new local wireless infrastructure for his system to work. That's a drawback. "That's reinventing the wheel," Wherify's Neher said. "There's going to be a lot of dead spots with that concept."
An early use for WozNet will be home security, Wozniak says. The system can notify users remotely when something happens, such as a break-in at the house, he says.
WozNet is still in development, but the firm has signed up Motorola Inc.'s broadband communications unit as a partner.
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GIS Monitor - What is a Location-Based Service, Anyway?
http://www.profsurv.com/pdf/Professional_Surveyor_Magazine-GIS_Monitor_Supplement-May03.pdf
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GPS cellphones blank out during 911 calls
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| 17:38 18 June 04 |
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| NewScientist.com news service |
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Some emergency calls made from GPS-enabled Verizon Wireless cellphones in the US are being disrupted because of a glitch in the way the phones divide their processor time between GPS-location calculations and voice transmission.
Verizon Wireless, based in New York City, first announced on Wednesday that the emergency stations that receive 911 calls had noticed disruptions.
The company, the largest cell phone service provider in the US, says the glitch causes a series of two second "blank outs" at the beginning of a 911 call. Theoretically a caller could experience up to 16 of these, says Verizon Wireless spokesperson Jeff Nelson.
He emphasises that only a "handful" of calls are affected, usually when the GPS chip experiences problems locating a satellite. This is most likely to happen in built-up areas or indoors, say GPS experts.
But David Williams, CEO of the consultancy E911-Location Based Services in Wilton, Connecticut, says that even a small number of disruptions could be dangerous. "The vast majority of people calling 911 are in a panic. Any delay increases the panic and could cause them to hang up," he told New Scientist. Verizon Wireless says it is not aware of any serious consequences of the glitch so far.
Re-allocating resources
The interruptions in the flow of voice data from the cell phone occur when the GPS chip requires more processing time than it has been allocated, and cuts into the resources normally reserved for voice transmission. "The voice blanks out as the resources of the chip go towards contacting the satellite," explains Nelson.
At the end of 2003, a similar problem occurred at Sprint PCS, based in Kansas City, the fourth biggest US network provider. The company fixed it by "tweaking" the software that manages the data exchange between the phone and the GPS satellite.
This included halving the time programmed in for searching for GPS satellites and extending the time allocated for making the connection between the caller and the emergency receiver. "There are virtually no problems now," says spokesperson Dan Wilinsky.
Verizon Wireless expects to be able to fix its glitch shortly by upgrading the software that manages the network and communicating the upgrade to the phones automatically, says Nelson. This would mean users would not have to install a software patch on their phones. But he cautions: "There is no definitive fix for this yet. Our network is not the same as Sprint's"
Williams agrees that the problem is "probably not long term". "It will affect some people but I would not view this as a fundamental problem with the technology."
Triangulation system
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Verizon Wireless, along with all other US cellphone network providers are currently working to equip phones with location technology. This is in response to a federal mandate that states that all networks must soon be able to pinpoint cellphone users making emergency calls. For example, GPS-based systems must locate 95 per cent of users 150 metres by the end of 2005.
GPS is being adopted by three of the top six US service providers - Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Nextel. It will work in all outdoor locations, but not indoors or in high-rise areas known as "urban canyons".
But it is not the only way to pinpoint a caller's location. AT&T, Cingular and T-Mobile will use a triangulation system, based on the time it takes a caller to receive signals from three base stations.
This is easier to implement than GPS because each handset need not be replaced. The downside is that it relies on the caller being in range of three base stations, which is not always the case.
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Celeste Biever
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Mission Critical Communiications - The State of Public Safety
http://www.radioresourcemag.com/highlights/highlights.cfm?highlight_ID=82
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