Why is Nextel the only cell service with GPS mapping? Supposedly all cell phones now have GPS capability.?
Public Comments
Just wait a few months - I think you will see many more carriers offering locate services.
While all new phones have the e911 service to aide emergency response, it is different from GPS handheld recievers. It it up to the individual cell carrier to determine how they utilize this technology.
Verizon offers GPS services.
You can get an add-on GPS system for Treo 650 (from Earthlink, Sprint, Verizon, or Cingular) as well as for some of the Microsoft-enabled PDAs. These cost about $100-$150 and are a great way to get GPS on your phone!
First not all phones have GPS capabilities. These are limited to CDMA technologies with Verizon and Sprint (others as well). GSM phones use TDOA techology which is Tower based, so no need for GPS chips. The GPS chips in the phones today are limited in what they do. They only pass ephemeris data back to a server called a Position Determining Entity which then calculates your location. The phone doesn't actually have any coordinates. So to get that, the system would have to transmit that data back to the phone. This is not cheap, nor efficient. The Nextel phones put full functionality GPS, therefore they could do this type of system. I agree that as these systems mature and technology changes, more systems will be using location mapping engines in the device.
