[Vibrant Android Development] renardk764:
Personal background: Associate degree in Laser Electro Optics. 12 years research and development semiconductor manufacturing, 15 years as an EMT, last 10 years as a 911 telecommunicator for Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services. 6 of those years as a Training Officer.

The reason for my (cough) resume is so everyone understands I have the technical background and experience to explain the differences between e911 and 911.

Public Safety Answering Point: the local organization tasked with answering emergency request phone calls and dispatching appropriate emergency resources. PSAP's are broken into two types, primary and secondary. The primary PSAP is typically the local police department for city's and the local sheriff's department for unincorporated areas. Some colleges have their own police department and may have their own PSAP. So realistically a person can connect to a different 911 call center depending upon their location within a small geographic area.

Large urban areas typically have secondary PSAP's. The secondary PSAP usually consists of public safety departments not related to law enforcement such as fire and/or emergency medical services (ambulance services) specially trained to send request specific resources dependent upon the emergency. In Austin and Travis County we run 120 thousand EMS 911 calls per year. The police department takes about 2000 911 calls per day.

911: a simple to remember phone number nation wide allowing everyone access to emergency services. No location information is transmitted or received. The PSAP is responsible for determining location by interrogation of the caller. This can a problem if the caller is altered or otherwise unable to give accurate information.

e911: Enhanced 911 was created to ensure location information was transmitted to the 911 call center regardless of the callers ability to give this information. The phone companies are responsible for ensuring this information is available and transmitted to the PSAP. Conventional e911 is effective for landline phones. Cell phones present a completely different problem.

Cell phones are required to meet two different location technology standards.

Phase 1 wireless data: as cell phone use skyrocketed in the nineties, legislation was passed requiring provider's to transmit location data based on the cell phone tower that the cell phone was connected to. While this is helpful, it is problematic due to the sheer size of the area that had to be searched if the caller was unable to give their location.

Phase 2 wireless data: legislation now requires GPS location data be provided by the cell phone company. This location information can be transmitted via the gps chip from the cell phone or via radio location triangulation using the cell towers in the immediate area of the caller.

So in a nut shell, my test of neobuddy's ICS indicated that 911 worked for a sim loaded phone. I did not test the phone with the sim pulled. I also did NOT verify that GPS data was being received by the PSAP.

If 911 works with your phone it should work in any area. I was connecting with two different PSAP's as I live right between two different area's and sometimes connect to one or the other.

Hope this clears some of the confusion. A good explanation is located at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1.

genesis3 and I are still working on the cm7 issue and getting closer to a resolution.

Later tators