[thelist] wireless thinking aloud

[Tommy Martin]

Peter Van Dijck <peter at vardus.com> wrote:
>Does anyone have info on this (technical)? Would it be possible to 
>build something like this today (maybe with a wap phone)? Would 
>location based tracking be worldwide?

New Scientist published an article on the problems of pinpointing 
mobile devices to within a few feet (October 2000). There's a bunch 
of different solutions in the works, not least because the FCC in the 
US are pushing laws to force cellular nets to provide accurate 
locations for cellphone calls made to the emergency services. The 
European Commission is apparently backing similar plans.

The less than comprehensive list of players/systems in the running seems to be:

SnapTrack (proposing adding GPS chips/antennae to mobile devices)

Cambridge Positioning Systems (triangluation between custom built 
listening posts)

US Wireless (interesting system called 'RadioCamera' that allows 
existing cells and phones to get a fix from a single basestation: 
http://www.uswcorp.com/USWCMainPages/our.htm)


Sounds as though there'll be a whole lot of privacy and legal issues 
to deal with before the likes of us web developers will be able to 
tell which chair our site's visitors are sitting in...

Tommy

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