Verizon Wireless passes mark for 911 call location
77803
Verizon Wireless, the No. 2 U.S.  carrier, said on Friday more than 95 percent of its customers  had phones capable of identifying their location when they call  911 for help.
221124
Customers are now able to add wireless to a Verizon service bundle to get even more discounts.
540686
The U.S. FCC is working to ensure that wireless carriers meet E911 location accuracy requirements within five years.
180055
Verizon, the largest US phone company, will hire as many as 5,000 workers from Massachusetts to Virginia to build a fiber-optic network to 3 million homes by the end of next year.
719626
(InfoWorld) - Intrado Inc., a vendor of emergency dialing technology, has conducted a successful trial of using E911 emergency dialing capabilities with mobile VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) phones, the company said. Intrado's trial in New York in August was aimed at solving one of the major problems with location-based E911, or enhanced 911, service with VoIP phones, said Stephen Meer, Intrado's chief technology officer. E911 relays the location of a caller to the emergency dispatch center, but many VoIP phones are not tied to one physical address -- users can connect the phones to any broadband network to make calls. The Intrado auto-locate trial used back-end 911 system technology from the company in combination with several location-finding technologies, Meer said. Included in the test were GPS (global positioning system) technology, a technology that triangulates high-definition television signals and one that surveys local Wi-Fi access points, he said. Combined with Intrado technology, the location-finding technologies were able to route VoIP 911 calls to emergency dispatch centers, using the dispatch equipment already installed, Meer said. No location-finding technology works in every situation -- GPS, for example, can have problems in densely packed tall buildings -- but a combination of location-finding technology can work, he said. "The real solution here is going to be a bundling of technologies," Meer said. Many large VoIP providers have been slow to provide E911 service to all their customers, with the mobility of VoIP phones being one of the problems. Because VoIP services route 911 calls through IP networks instead of the traditional telephone network, some VoIP phones have phone numbers that can follow the phone wherever it's plugged in. The Intrado test shows this problem has solutions, Meer said, although none of the newer location-finding technologies works as well as a traditional wireline phone tied to one address. The Intrado trial generally provided dispatchers with locations based on latitude and longitude, similar to current wireless phone 911 calls, but not as useful as street addresses, he said. Although the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has required VoIP providers to offer E911 service, more public discussion is needed about how precise a location the E911 call should provide, Meer said. "If the national public policy turns out to be, 'We're sort of going to tell you within a mile or so where you are,' there are going to be no little girls calling for help when their mommy's fallen down the steps," Meer said. "We have to have some interesting discussions about what's the right level for public safety." The Intrado trial doesn't attack a second problem with VoIP phones and E911. Providers such as Vonage Holdings Corp. and AT&T Inc. have allowed customers to pick phone numbers not normally assigned to their local area. This "nomadic" service allows customers to choose a phone number that would not be a long-distance call to family or friends living half-way across the country, but the nonlocal phone numbers make it difficult to implement E911's location pinpointing feature, Vonage and other VoIP providers have said.
609275
Verizon Communications, the nation's second-largest telecom company, told congressional investigators that it has provided customers' telephone records to federal authorities in emergency cases without court orders hundreds of times since 2005.
527535
Wi-Fi hot spots emerged as a new emergency communications alternative in Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Charley, with traffic at some outlets up 50%.
765412
The trademark "SprintSpeed" could take on a whole new meaning in 2008, as the telecommunications firm moves ahead with plans to deploy its long-awaited WiMAX service, known commercially as Xohm. Yesterday, the company announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that a soft launch of the service to Xohm employees in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. is now under way.
718258
New service sends color maps and directions to cell phone users.
734230
Saying current standards for cellular E911 are not enough, the Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to push for better accuracy in pinpointing a cellular user's location.
7002
Verizon&#39;s digital subscriber line service is available to 6,600 additional homes and businesses in the Northampton, Nazareth and Bethlehem areas.
32688
Can first responders find you in an emergency? Don't count on it just yet, despite years of work by wireless providers.
349722
As part of a settlement in a class-action settlement announced over the weekend, customers of Sprint Nextel's CDMA service in California and parts of Florida will be given the code and instructions needed for them to unlock their phones from the Sprint network.
63791
Verizon Wireless of Bedminster, NJ, announced a partnership with Circuit City Stores Inc. of Richmond, Va., to create Verizon Wireless shops in 570 of its Circuit City superstores.
230216
Cell phone can respond to motion by dialing numbers or ending a call.
340655
The city of Philadelphia and Verizon Communications Inc. struck an agreement Tuesday that would allow the city to provide wireless Internet access as a municipal service even though Gov. Ed Rendell signed legislation giving Verizon the power to scuttle the project.
51855
An emergency communications service just launched in Dallas will allow police, fire departments, law-enforcement agencies, and airport officials to talk over their existing networks and equipment.