Caller ID services are provided by telephone companies to permit a called party to determine who is calling even before answering the call. Caller ID services generally provide a display of the calling party's name and/or telephone number. Called parties may used the caller ID service to screen calls and/or to review the names and numbers for missed calls. Thus, caller ID has become a valuable feature of telephone service.
Often, it is also desirable for the location of a caller to be known by the called party. This is especially true in emergency situations. For this reason, automatic location identification (ALI) has been instituted for 911 service so that a calling party's location is provided to the 911 service being called. This enables the 911 service to dispatch assistance to the calling party's location without relying on the calling party to verbally provide the location information. However, the ALI database is accessible only by public safety answering points for 911 services and is inaccessible for non-911 telephone calls.
Other called parties may also benefit from knowing the calling party's location without relying on verbal communication. For example, a poison control center may be called, rather than 911, by a parent in response to a child ingesting a harmful substance. The situation may warrant dispatching emergency personnel to assist the child, but the location of the child must be learned by the poison control center before emergency personnel can be dispatched.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that obtains location data of a calling party for display to a called party for non-911 telephone calls.