[VoiceOps] Fwd: 911 and Softphones

[Alex Balashov]

This may be a stupid question, but I know absolutely nothing about
mobile:

I'm deep inside an apartment building, and there are no windows on the
lower level. How does my phone know where I am?

I've heard much about deducing it through WiFi and/or Bluetooth, but
how?

-- Alex

On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 01:27:05PM -0700, Carlos Alvarez wrote:

> GPS is useless inside most buildings.  That's why mobiles have A-GPS, which
> is assisted by wifi and bluetooth.  Even in homes, GPS signals are mostly
> blocked.  In a commercial building, almost guaranteed to be blocked.
> 
> On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 1:23 PM Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron at heyaaron.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > I'm still wondering why desk phones don't have a small built-in GPS chip
> > yet?  Soft phones on cell phones could have access to GPS.  Web browsers
> > wouldn't work so well.
> > But having the phone out-of-band-signal the phone server with GPS info
> > (maybe a SIP header or something) would allow the phone server to use that
> > information for routing 911 calls.
> > It could even pass the info through directly to more 'advanced' 911
> > centers.
> >
> > One possibility would be to go old-style and transmit the data in-band
> > over the voice circuit similar to modems or DSL.  We're only talking a few
> > bytes for GPS coordinates, elevation, and accuracy information.  Burst the
> > data at the beginning of the call, or every 30 seconds, etc...
> >
> > My motorola HT-1250 from two decades ago would transmit something like an
> > 8-character radio identifier when you keyed up.  It only delayed the
> > conversation by a third of a second.
> >
> > Maybe the phone server could even add in some additional information (i.e.
> > "123 West Main St / 3rd Floor / Room 42").
> >
> > -A
> >
> > On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 12:53 PM Carlos Alvarez <caalvarez at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> I *thought* I had read something about mobile apps being given a pass on
> >> 911, but not completely sure.  And then where do we cross the line?  Mobile
> >> app, tablet running a WebRTC softphone...etc...
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 12:41 PM Mike Hammett <voiceops at ics-il.net>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> We're looking that we may have to allocate a lot more DIDs, simply for
> >>> the new 911 requirements. We have a lot of clients with work from home
> >>> people. Some have their own DIDs already, some don't.
> >>>
> >>> Softphones make this a lot more complicated. We could have the same
> >>> extension connected via desk phone, windows app, Chrome extension, phone
> >>> app, and tablet app. The desk phone is pretty easy. The mobile app? Yeah,
> >>> that's inherently much more difficult to manage.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> I don't know.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -----
> >>> Mike Hammett
> >>> Intelligent Computing Solutions
> >>> http://www.ics-il.com
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Midwest Internet Exchange
> >>> http://www.midwest-ix.com
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------
> >>> *From: *"Mike Hammett" <voiceops at ics-il.net>
> >>> *To: *"Voiceops.org" <voiceops at voiceops.org>
> >>> *Sent: *Thursday, May 14, 2020 2:04:43 PM
> >>> *Subject: *[VoiceOps] Fwd: 911 and Softphones
> >>>
> >>> The pitfalls of having my email address mirror the mailing lists I'm on,
> >>> I get list submissions.  :-)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -----
> >>> Mike Hammett
> >>> Intelligent Computing Solutions
> >>> http://www.ics-il.com
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Midwest Internet Exchange
> >>> http://www.midwest-ix.com
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------
> >>> *From: *"Christopher Aloi" <ctaloi at gmail.com>
> >>> *To: *voiceops at ics-il.net
> >>> *Sent: *Thursday, May 14, 2020 9:39:41 AM
> >>> *Subject: *911 and Softphones
> >>>
> >>> Hey All,
> >>>
> >>> With the recent migration to everyone working from home we are seeing a
> >>> huge increase in soft phone usage.  How is everyone handling location
> >>> updates for 911 with soft phones?  Our switch has the concept of sites and
> >>> users fall within a site but can also travel across sites.  An out pulsed
> >>> number is bound to the site when 911 is dialed from within the site.  We
> >>> are looking at building individual sites for each user so they can have a
> >>> dedicated unique outbound number only for 911.  Does your company consider
> >>> a soft phone the same as a "hard" phone with regards to 911?  From the
> >>> reading I have done I see no delineation between the two.  Thanks,  Chris
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>> VoiceOps at voiceops.org
> >>> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> VoiceOps mailing list
> >>> VoiceOps at voiceops.org
> >>> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
> >>>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> VoiceOps mailing list
> >> VoiceOps at voiceops.org
> >> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
> >>
> >

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-- 
Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC

Tel: +1-706-510-6800 / +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) 
Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/