Musings and Mutterings

globeandmail.com: Cellphone carriers have one year to upgrade 911 system, CRTC says

Cell phone companies have been told that by this time next year they must be able to locate callers to within a radius of between 10 and 300 meters using either GPS, triangulation, or both. Currently, Canadian cell phone companies can only locate a person to within the radius of the nearest tower, an area that can be between 4 and 20 kilometres.

Digital Domain - What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting - NYTimes.com

The New York Times presents an interesting article on the discrepancy between the apparent and actual cost of text messaging to wireless carriers. In the US, per-message fees doubled from 10 to 20 cents between 2005 and 2008, during which the industry experienced a 10-fold increase in text message use. The article states that text messages must follow two legs of their journey: a portion on hardware and a portion wirelessly. For the hardware portion, is seems, text messages cost an infinitesimal amount of money. On the wireless portion, text messages are limited to 160 characters so that they can fit into the control channel: bandwidth reserved for network operation so is needed whether or not text messages use it. As a result, the wireless per message cost is, essentially, nil because the cost outlay has already been allocated to pay for network upkeep: the text message piggybacks for free and represents pure profit. Certainly food for thought.