Location-based information has implication far beyond the mobile consumer who wants to be able to use their smartphone to locate the nearest restaurant or nightclub. Location-based services also play an important role in first response, whether it is a natural disaster, a family emergency or anything else that requires attention.

One of the challenges for soft phone users was the lack of requirement to enter location information if they happened to move locations. A failure to change that information could truly mean the difference between life and death in the case of an emergency.

To address this challenge in the soft phone realm, 911 ETC has developed the SoftLoc. Announced last month at VoiceCon, SoftLoc is an application that requires users to input location information every time they startup their soft phone application. The solution is designed to be quick and easy, requiring only a few clicks of the mouse, to be sure it is easily adopted.

A number of 911 ETC customers are already taking the necessary measures to put the SoftLoc application in place, which in essence removes the liability from the corporate and places responsibility for phone provisioning back on the user.

Running as a Windows system-tray application, SoftLoc quietly waits for the user to launch a configured soft phone application. Once launched, SoftLoc will appear above all other applications to remind the user to provision an emergency location. Users can save as many as three frequently-used locations to the remote emergency server.

Other locations can be saved locally for quick server updates. And, to be sure the information is actually provided into the system, failure to provision an emergency location will force the soft phone application to be closed. This step will help to eliminate the problem of people simple skipping this step in the soft phone launch.

'With SoftLoc users are forced to input their location information - the corporation has the ability to disable the phone until this is done," stated Mike Anderson, National Sales Manager of 911 ETC, in a statement.

'We had customers concerned about the liability issue soft phones created without any sort of requirement in place to update location information. With SoftLoc, the responsibility of provisioning the phone is put back upon the user and accurate location information is ensured in the event of an emergency."

911 ETC focuses on the design and build of individual E911 solutions to ensure safety. The company also addresses the mandated E911 statues throughout the entire United States, delivering its E-911 application through a SaaS (News - Alert) platform.

In other E911 news, the company this month announced that Larry Scott, the founder of 911 ETC, was recognized as an Industry Leader at the seventh annual 9-1-1 Honors Gala in Washington, D.C. Scott's recognition comes along side the announcement that his company has surpassed 450 unique E911 implementations.