From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue May 9 7:28:32 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from ns.yogotech.com (ns.yogotech.com [206.127.123.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 17ED737B87F for ; Tue, 9 May 2000 07:28:28 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nate@yogotech.com) Received: from nomad.yogotech.com (nomad.yogotech.com [206.127.123.131]) by ns.yogotech.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA07694; Tue, 9 May 2000 08:28:06 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from nate@nomad.yogotech.com) Received: (from nate@localhost) by nomad.yogotech.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id IAA03403; Tue, 9 May 2000 08:28:06 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from nate) Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 08:28:06 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <200005091428.IAA03403@nomad.yogotech.com> From: Nate Williams MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Wes Peters Cc: Nate Williams , Olaf Hoyer , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [OT] Finding people with GSM phones (was Re: GPS heads up ) In-Reply-To: <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> <39179C46.382BDA46@softweyr.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.34 under 19.16 "Lille" XEmacs Lucid Reply-To: nate@yogotech.com (Nate Williams) Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > 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. Sure. > 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." Ahh, but like my friends at Qualcomm postulated, we can't completely comply with the order using GPS (phones outside of cell coverage, phones just turned on, etc...), so we're not putting GPS chipsets on the phone, since the amount of failures will be far less with the existing solution than they would be with a GPS solution. We're damned in we do, and we're damned if we don't, but at least the former way we'll lose less money. :) Nate To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message