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911 Service Still Catching Up With Cell Phone Boom

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 July 2005, 15:00 CDT

Jul. 26--Mick Himmelheber has had a cell phone since his first big trip away from home his sophomore year of high school.

"My parents gave it to me to keep track of me when I was younger," Himmelheber, 20, said.

The phone was also like an insurance policy, he said, to be kept nearby in case of an emergency.

But the sense of security many cell phone subscribers have might not be valid when an emergency arises. A 911 expert, who has been in the business for 28 years, said she sees the same challenges adapting the system to cell phone technology now as she experienced years ago with land lines.

"We find ourselves saying, 'Oh, Lord, we're backing up here, rather than moving forward,'" said Elaine Sexton, 911 coordinator with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA).

Of the about 89 emergency call centers in Georgia, only 12 offer 911 service that can trace cell phone calls to an exact location, and none are in Middle Georgia.

By comparison, 100 percent of the centers can pinpoint the address when a 911 call comes from a land line.

And as the cell phone calls - more difficult and more expensive to trace - grow, so do concerns about 911 officials who may not be able to direct help to the right location.

"Those calls that are responded to, those calls (that) are success stories, are that way because that communications officer had the location," Sexton said. "Without that location, if that person can't talk to you, you're going to listen to that person die."

The FCC is trying to address this gap in 911 service by requiring all wireless carriers to adopt technology as easy to locate as land line 911 calls by Dec. 31.

Carriers will do this in two phases.

Phase I requires wireless carriers to provide the 911 center with the location of the cell tower transmitting the call, getting emergency responders within miles of the caller.

Phase II requires wireless carriers to provide the caller's location by using either a global positioning system chip or a method called triangulation that analyzes the signal between three cell towers. Sexton said this could place responders within 50 meters.

But to do that, both the cellular companies and 911 centers must upgrade their technology.

"Meeting the (December) deadline is proving to be a challenge," said Erin McGee, spokeswoman with CTIA The Wireless Association. The association has represented the industry in the past on issues of regulation.

McGee said new cell phones are 100 percent compliant with phase II regulations, equipped with the ability to be located by either a GPS chip or by triangulation method.

Sexton said the real hurdle might be getting local 911 centers upgraded with the digital mapping systems necessary to read the longitude and latitude information.

But the Macon-Bibb County 911 center, equipped with phase II technology since April, still can't complete phase II until all mobile carriers provide location information, said director Dominick Andrews.

The newest phone service technology is Voice over Internet Protocol, which allows calls to be made over an Internet connection. VoIP currently offers no 911 connection, Sexton said. Sexton said her office is working to address that issue, though there are few VoIP subscribers in Georgia.

"If one call couldn't come through, that is one too many," she said.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

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Source: The Macon Telegraph (Macon, Ga.)

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