Wireless Week reports that T-Mobile USA has abandoned their E-911 location technology called Enhanced Observed Time Division of arrival (E-OTD), which uses triangulation to determine location. Instead they’ll move forward with Time Division of Arrival technology. Fellow GSM operators AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless abandoned the triangulation method earlier under fears it wouldn’t be accurate enough to meet the FCC’s E-911 requirements.
Wireless Location Technologies, although arcane, are likely to have a big commercial impact. Location based services (LBS) such as mobile maps, may account for over 40% of operators’ mobile data services revenues in 2007, according to the ARC Group.
The news poses a blow to E-OTD promoters such as Cursor Systems and Intel. Cursor has repeatedly assured GSM carriers that its technology satisfies the FCC’s Oct. 1, 2003, accuracy guidelines.
T-Mobile told the FCC that its decision to abandon E-OTD was based on a number of factors. Foremost was whether or not there would be continued vendor commitment to implementing and upgrading E-OTD to meet the FCC’s October accuracy standard of 50-100 meters, given that both AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless have decided not to use E-OTD in their networks. T-Mobile said the shift of those two big carriers away from E-OTD likely would draw vendor time and resources away from further E-OTD development. Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS will use a GPS-based system.
Shifting technologies this late in the game is a risk. AT&T Wireless last year was fined $2.2 million by the FCC for its failure to meet the Phase II E911 mandates.
The FCC’s wireless E911 program is divided into two parts – Phase I and Phase II. Phase I requires carriers, upon appropriate request by a local Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), to report the telephone number of a wireless 911 caller and the location of the antenna that received the call. Phase II requires wireless carriers to provide far more precise location information, within 50 to 100 meters in most cases.
[...] C/Net reviews how cellphones are used for determining location: The search for the Kim family is the latest example of how important cell phone technology has become as a public safety tool. [...]
Left by dailywireless.org » Cellular Triangulation on December 8th, 2006