Quote:
Originally Posted by bostonnerd
As part of the e911 FCC requirements all handsets sold since ~ 2003 had to provide e911 capabilities. The actual implimentation specifics depend on whether its CDMA or GSM. There are multiple ways to provide this, with GPS being only one of them so it's handset and carrier dependent. The thing to remember is that with non GPS e911 solutions the accuracy is only 150 - 300 meters. Not something I would depend on for a GPS mapping replacement especially while driving
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And it's also useful to note that while e911 has been in place since "~2003", that doesn't mean carriers have been compliant to it since then (or ever).
Most, if not all CDMA devices sold are e911 compliant because a) they're Qualcomm based and b) Qualcomm makes GPS receivers, which are in every phone as part of the reference design. Most EDGE phones are either *not* e911 compliant, or they rely on triangulation between cell towers (which is possible in TDMA but not very useful unless you know where your base stations actually are), or as in the case of the 8800, they have embedded GPS that supports e911.