On the heels of reports that the location-based services platforms market is seeing a steep rise, Everett, Wash.-based 911 ETC – a company that designs and builds individual E911 solutions to ensure safety, while addressing the mandated E911 statutes throughout the United States – has announced the release of SoftLoc, a product that requires soft phone users to provision their current location for the purpose of emergency services.

 

The company says it developed the product because customers raised concerns that users of soft phones will ignore inputting critical location information when they log in.

 

“We had customers concerned about the liability issue soft phones created without any sort of requirement in place to update location information,” said Mike Anderson, national sales manager at 911 ETC.

 

SoftLoc runs as a Windows system-tray application. Company officials said that it waits for the user to launch a configured soft phone application. And upon launch, SoftLoc will appear above all other applications and remind the user to provision an emergency location.

 

To the remote emergency server, up to three frequently used locations can be saved. Company officials said that these can be provisioned with just a few mouse clicks. Moreover, other locations can be saved locally for quick server updates. Company official said that the soft phone application will be “forcibly” closed if the user chooses not to provision an emergency location.

 

“With SoftLoc, users are forced to input their location information – the corporation has the ability to disable the phone until this is done,” Anderson said.

 

The use of LBS technology is critical to E911, which leverages locations to help emergency responders more effectively address problem situations, often saving time, lives and property. Market researchers say that kind of technology is seeing greater and greater demand. As TMCnet reported, global LBS platforms revenue will grow from $560 million in 2010 to $1.8 billion in 2015.

 

According to Anderson, SoftLoc puts the responsibility of provisioning the phone to be back on the user, and accurate location information is ensured in the event of an emergency.