Location Accuracy Proposal Debated; Carriers Say It’s Too Soon
E-911 technology isn’t at the point where it can meet the standards for location accuracy being contemplated by the FCC, said AT&T and CTIA officials at an FCBA continuing legal education seminar Thursday. The emphasis should be on reaching a point where dispatchers can be sent to an exact address, they said. With the development of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, that level of accuracy could happen “sooner than people think,” said Joseph Marx, AT&T assistant vice president-federal regulatory, not predicting a time frame. No “peer-reviewed” studies have shown that the standards being contemplated are possible in the FCC’s time frame, said Brian Josef, CTIA assistant vice president-regulatory affairs.
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A “regulatory gap” exists because there are no locations standards for 911 calls made from indoors, said Nicole McGinnis, deputy chief of the FCC Public Safety Bureau Policy and Licensing Division. A rulemaking launched in February would require carriers to be able to locate 911 callers inside a building within 50 meters for 67 percent of calls within two years of the adoption of final rules and for 80 percent within five years (CD Feb 21 p1). Indoor accuracy “really has become so important right now as we move more and more towards cellular communications,” said former Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett, now a cybersecurity lawyer at Venable. Many of those who call 911 by cellphone can’t tell dispatchers where they are because they are incapacitated, are children, or for other reasons. At times, public safety answering points get highly inaccurate locations from cellphones, said Steve Souder, director of Public Safety Communications for Fairfax County, Virginia.
Souder said then-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski tried calling 911 from his cellphone during a visit to the county’s dispatch center. The call showed up for dispatchers as having come from the meat department at a Costco a half mile away. A second attempt put him in the bakery section, Souder said. A number of factors pose difficulties for carriers, Marx said, including weak signals indoors. Even if the 50-meter standard were met, Marx said, calls could send dispatchers to an adjacent building from the person needing help. Current technologies allow for improved standards and the FCC should not delay action until 911 location information for first responders meets the gold standard, said Trey Forgety, National Emergency Number Association director of government affairs. “We don’t want to let perfect become the enemy of the good."
Laws and regulations are trying to keep up with the transition to wireless, said David Grossman, senior technology policy adviser for Rep. Anna Esho, D-Calif., on a separate panel. With so many people communicating through text messages, “there’s an assumption you can do the same thing with 911,” he said. The transition raises issues such as how people needing help will know if they can text 911, said Eric Hagerson, T-Mobile senior regulatory affairs manager. “The transition period needs to be thought through very carefully.”