Date: Mon, 08 May 2000 23:04:06 -0600 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com> Cc: Olaf Hoyer <ohoyer@fbwi.fh-wilhelmshaven.de>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [OT] Finding people with GSM phones (was Re: GPS heads up ) Message-ID: <39179C46.382BDA46@softweyr.com> References: <200005061847.LAA07298@mass.cdrom.com> <200005061607.KAA17627@nomad.yogotech.com> <4.1.20000506204714.00cd5290@mail.rz.fh-wilhelmshaven.de> <39160924.D00CAF40@softweyr.com> <200005081703.LAA27088@nomad.yogotech.com>
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Nate Williams wrote:
>
> > All this discussion of the wonders of GSM is wonderful, but doesn't apply
> > to the USA where this mandate is happening.
>
> You mean the mandate that GPS must be part of the phone? As I said, my
> friend at Qualcomm stated that GPS wasn't a requirement, but the ability
> to know the location of the phone within 100m *is* a requirement.
Right, the mandate is to be able to locate any phone that can reach
a single tower within 100m. Never mind that this goal cannot be
accomplished.
> Because the a large percentage (majority?) of cell phones are used in
> locations where GPS can't be used effectively (think any big city inside
> of a car), Qualcomm is not adding GPS chipsets into their phones.
> According to my friend, the solutions they have designed work for both
> the existing analog and digital phones being used today, and are much
> better than the 100m accuracy marks required by law (as stated before,
> the number 25m jumps to mind).
As long as you have multiple towers in reach. This limitation certainly
applies to analog coverage, which will probably be pretty much deprecated
by 2003, and with digital phones at the extreme edge of coverage.
> So, they get higher accuracy solutions that don't require changes to
> their phones, thus driving up costs. (Although it does require changes
> to the cell towers, but that's a much cheaper alternative since there
> are fewer of them *PLUS* it works with old phones, making it *very*
> attractive to the government.)
I don't think the government ever stops to consider the cost of the
idiotic requirements they levy on people. The phrase we're groping
for here is "unfunded mandate."
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/
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