On Feb 6, 2010, at 8:16 AM, George N. White III wrote: > On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 4:12 PM, Neil Laubenthal <[email protected]> wrote: >> I don't know for sure . . .but would imagine that one of the things that the >> cell tower transmits is some sort of location information. >> >> >> On Feb 5, 2010, at 12:38 PM, Chad Leigh -- ObjectWerks Inc wrote: >> >>> Honest question here: >>> >>> How can it uses the cell towers to figure things out if there is no data >>> plan to ask someone? Does it have a list of all cell towers in it >>> somewhere? I would think that it would need to communicate with someone >>> about it after getting tower info from the towers >>> > > The law in US and Canada says you can always use a cell phone for 911 > calls even without a plan. One of the reasons for GPS in cell phones > (besides helping the men in black track the locations of "persons of > interest") is the problems that have occurred with 911 calls ended up > on a tower in a different jurisdiction where the 911 call center > wasn't familiar with the place names used by the caller. This often > happens on shores of places like Puget Sound and the Bay of Fundy > where different jursidictions are separated by bodies of water narrow > enough that cell signals can reach towers serving the opposite shore.
Yes, but this has nothing to do with the question. I am not asking about using a phone to make a call like 911 even without a plan. I am asking how the phone can use the cell towers to assist the GPS without a data plan to get cell tower info from a database somewhere or something. Using the phone without a plan for voice is an easy proposition. Jared sent a wikipedia link about assisted GPS. At least one of the methods there relies on an IP link so that a central server can be accessed. Again, without the plan, how does it get access to the IP network? I did not understand most of the stuff on the wikipedia link on assisted GPS I will admit. Chad _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
