Many Public Safety magazines, webpages and social media sites host stories centred around the challenges our industry faces:
Roaming issues of mobile calls
Power and Service outages
Inconsistency of service/ Staffing shortages
Privacy concerns
Next Generation transitions and incompatibilities
Funding
Wireless mobile location accuracy
These topics are key to an optimal Emergency Number Network service. Build a solid foundation with them and the service will become stronger and more resilient. Ignore or neglect that foundation and it will crumble.
Wireless location accuracy is a long-time discussion topic. According to the FCC, providing dispatchable location for a mobile call could potentially save over 10,000 lives every year in the US alone. It’s a figure used repeatedly to incite our industry to resolve its mobile location issues. Plus, having accurate mobile location is not just an integral part of the current system, but essential for “Next Generation” services too.
Matt Gerst, Vice President of regulatory affairs for CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association) until August 2021, said in 2017:
"Being able to provide an address with a floor, suite or apartment number is very important to enhancing our ability to respond to indoor wireless 9-1-1 calls.”
Source: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/how-our-911-emergency-call-system-can-fail-us/
The EENA website also quotes:
“Accurate caller location in case of an emergency is one of the most significant pieces of information for emergency call takers. Caller location can have a huge impact on the safety of citizens in many ways and helps reduce response times.”
Source: https://eena.org/our-work/eena-special-focus/advanced-mobile-location/
Both comments concern mobile caller location…as important and relevant today as when first written. Sadly our industry still doesn’t provide dispatchable location for mobile calls…even after deploying several location methodologies.
In 2022 will we continue to chase location technologies that simply don’t work well enough? Or will we finally do the right thing and deploy something that does?
How many more lives do we need to lose before we get it right?