It's late at night, you're traveling on an unfamiliar road in an area
with few buildings or landmarks, and the worst happens -- there is an
accident and you need help, now. Calling 911 on a
mobile phone is your first impulse, but the best the
phone company can do is provide emergency rescue teams with the location
of the cell tower nearest your position, which could be a mile or more away.
With more than 100,000 emergency calls made
each day from cell phones in the United States, pinpointing mobile phone users
with an enhanced 911 (E911) system to
reduce response time when lives are at stake has become a high priority for
the U.S. Federal Communications
Commission (FCC).
And the FCC's wish is the carriers' command: They
face an October deadline for providing location-based capability to
customers. That time limit -- for Phase II of the FCC's E911 order of
1996 -- requires that each phone company doing business in the United States
must offer either handset- or network-based location detection capability.
Handsets vs. Networks
While it is a foregone conclusion that total compliance will not occur
by this fall, all carriers are working on deploying E911 service,
said Bill Dyer of Alcatel (NYSE: ALA),
which offers a mobile location server.
Dyer, director
of new ventures in Alcatel's network applications division, told
Wireless NewsFactor that there are pros and cons for each system.
"With handset-based technology, the phone itself does location-finding
through GPS (global positioning system) or assisted-GPS, which relies on
both networking equipment and the GPS satellite network," Dyer said.
"The GPS system needs a direct line of sight with the satellite, which
is a problem in big cities with tall buildings or in vehicles," he explained. "The
network technology is best for urban areas, but not in rural areas where
there are fewer towers farther apart and triangulation does not work
well."
Pinpoint Accuracy
The FCC requires that handset-based location technology must detect a caller's
location within 50 meters for 67 percent of all emergency calls and within 150
meters for 95 percent of calls, while network-based systems must be
accurate within 100 meters for 67 percent of calls and within 300 meters
for 95 percent of calls.
That is a significant improvement over the Phase I
mandate that mobile phone carriers identify just the telephone number
and cell ID -- accurate to within about a mile.
"Most carriers will eventually opt for the handset-based system," Dyer
said, "although right now it's about 55 percent network, 45 percent
handset among the service providers, because manufacturers are still
working on the technology." (continued...)
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