this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
356 points (96.6% liked)
Technology
58303 readers
23 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Mmmm. I dunno. You're talking about location availability off the hardware?
Last month, I had to call 911 when some random druggie lit what I thought was a building on fire across the street from my car (it turned out to just be a bonfire in the parking lot; figured that out while running over). I didn't know the cross-street for my location, and asked the dispatcher if she could just send the fire department to the location she got from my cell phone via E911. She had no idea what I was talking about, needed me to manually provide location.
So I'm not totally sure, at least in the US, what the compliance requirements are for availability of location information.
If you're talking about 911 usability without logging into a phone from a lock screen, I don't think that that'd create any issues -- that's all software, can do whatever if you're doing the OS.
More referring to selling a device classified as a mobile phone that might not be able to connect to emergency services without any tinkering. My google-fu is failing me now, but I'm trying to see what the actual requirements are, if they exist at all, to sell a mobile phone. All I'm seeing is that the radio shall connect to any available base stations during an emergency call regardless of subscriber status.
I don't know how the linux phone OS's are handling these kind of interactions with their baseband processing, if at all.
This is handled in the modem Firmware. Linux just has to supply "User has dialed number x, go into emergency mode" and then route the audio.
This is solved for all Linux phones as far as I know. From Openmoko over N900 till Librem 5.
E911 is a thing in some places and not in others depending on what each county dispatch wants to do and pay for. It does require some call center upgrades as I recall when I was working EMS and fire. It was kind of sketchy when I was working. But, everything is a bit sketchy when working in a very rural area in public safety.