Going Mainstream - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 142

Meeting the fcc's e-911 mandate proved to be a complicated afair—one with
moving targets and deadlines. It became clear that wireless carriers could not
comply with the original 2001 deadline. Network-based solutions still lacked the
required accuracy; handset-based solutions required more time to get new
phones into customers' hands. After SnapTrack announced in 1999 that its gps
technology could locate wireless callers to within 160 feet, the fcc gave wireless
carriers the option of meeting that new accuracy level by 2003 or choosing a net-
work solution with a 330-foot accuracy level by 2001. 152 When October 1, 2001,
arrived industry-wide progress lagged so much that the fcc had little choice but
to issue waivers. The agency extended the 2003 deadline to December 31, 2005,
but raised the required portion of subscriber handsets with tracking ability to 95
percent. By 2006 most carriers that chose network-based solutions, such as Cin-
gular and T-Mobile, were in compliance but those that chose the gps- handset
approach, including Verizon, were not because too few customers had upgraded
their phones. 153 Mergers brought more complications. Sprint was in compliance
until it acquired Nextel, whose customer base had older phones. 154 Industry
analysts attributed wireless carriers' intense marketing efforts touting new fea-
tures and offering rebates and prizes as partly driven by efforts to meet the fcc
mandate. 155 The promotions raised consumer awareness of the benefits that gps
and location-based services brought to mobile phones and sparked entrepre-
neurs to envision new applications. In any case, consumers have the fcc and
public safety agencies to thank in part for the amazing array of gps apps that are
available for their smartphones—as well as for the fact that their daily move-
ments may now be tracked via the same technology (see chapter 9). As the first
decade of the twenty-irst century ended, Arthur C. Clarke's 1956 vision of a
satellite-based worldwide network where “no-one on the planet need ever get
lost or become out of touch with the community” was reality.
Time for Anxiety
One further illustration of how gps evolved hand in hand with the digital rev-
olution seems amusing in retrospect, but the anxiety was real at the time. As
the year 2000 approached fears spread about the so-called millennium bug
or y2k computer problem—system failures caused by software with the year
coded in only two digits. Computer programmers shortened years to two dig-
its in the 1950s, when digital memory was scarce and expensive. The custom
persisted. Unknown effects of such programs rolling over from “99” to “00,”
making 2000 indistinguishable from 1900, threatened not only mainframe