Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Washington, D.C. Area Emergency Dispatch Centers Don't Get Location Information on Calls from Cell Phones

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 14:56:21 -0500

Hmm..........The Washington Post does not have the complete story.

E-911 Phase I DOES give limited location information to the dispatcher as mandated by the
FCC. The PSAP can determine the State, County, City and physical street address of the
tower the call originated from. However, the distance the tower covers can vary from 2-20
Miles or more depending on the site characteristics and terrain making it difficult but
not impossible to locate the caller.
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PHASE I E911 REQUIREMENTS

As of April 1, 1998, or within six months of a request by the designated Public
Safety Answering Point (PSAP), whichever is later, covered carriers are required to
provide to the PSAP the telephone number of the originator of a 911 call and the location
of the cell site or base station receiving a 911 call. This information assists in the
provision of timely emergency responses both by providing some information about the
general location from which the call is being received and by permitting emergency
calltakers
to re-establish a connection with the caller if the call is disconnected.

http://www.fcc.gov/911/enhanced/releases/factsheet_requirements_012001.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------
 Deployment Schedule: Phase I E911 Requirements

 63. With regard to Phase I of deployment, we will require covered carriers to relay the
caller's ANI and the location of the base station or cell site receiving a 911 call to the
PSAP
through the use of ``pseudo-ANI.''  We believe that the schedule for this phase of E911
deployment proposed by the signatories of the Consensus Agreement is a reasonable middle
ground between the positions of carriers and public safety organizations.  Therefore, we
will
require implementation of Phase I to begin not later than 12 months after the effective
date of
the rules adopted in this proceeding and to be completed not later than 18 months after
such
effective date.  In establishing this deployment schedule, we also conclude, however, that
the
requirements imposed upon covered carriers by our actions in establishing the schedule
shall
apply only if a carrier receives a request for E911 service from the administrator of a
PSAP
that has made the investment which is necessary to allow it to receive and utilize the
data
elements associated with the service, LEC infrastructure will support the service, and a
cost recovery mechanism is in place.

http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Wireless/Orders/1996/fcc96264.txt

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Cell Phones' Flaws Imperil 911 Response

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 31, 2003; Page B01

When the windows shattered in the little white
house in Chillum and flames lapped upward to
the children's bedrooms, a neighbor grabbed
her cell phone and dialed 911. Her call flew
through the skies of Prince George's County --
only to land at the wrong fire department, miles
away in the District.

For several minutes, the caller and the 911
operators frantically tried to figure out what
was going on. The operator didn't recognize the
address, but the woman kept repeating it and
asking for help, according to the D.C. fire
department's analysis of the 911 tapes.

The Feb. 3 blaze, which spread quickly inside
the small wood-frame house, killed a woman
and two of her children. But it was not the first
time that the response to a life-threatening --
and ultimately fatal -- emergency was delayed
because a cell phone call to 911 didn't work
the way it was supposed to.

There are no figures available on how many
rescue efforts go awry because of trouble with
wireless 911 calls, but the problem is national in
scope. In January, four teenagers sank in a
boat in Long Island Sound after making a
desperate call for help from a cell phone.
Emergency workers had been unable to
pinpoint where the call had come from.

The roots of the problem are both technological
and man-made.

First, there are the glitches that often
accompany any kind of cell phone call -- the
static, the echo, the inability to make a
connection and, in the Chillum case, the fact
that a wireless signal can get picked up by the
wrong cell phone tower. A recent study by
Consumer Reports showed that about 15
percent of the 911 calls made on cell phones during a test didn't get through.

And even when the calls are successful, most 911 call takers do not have access to
automatic
addresses or call-back numbers, as they do with calls from traditional phones, so they
don't immediately
know where to send help. Those features are called enhanced 911, or E911, and making cell
phones
compatible with the system is a lumbering regulatory task that has already missed one key
deadline on
the road to implementation, set for 2005.

Although these problems may be more common now as the number of cell phones continues to
multiply
and many people give up their traditional phones, the issue first gained widespread
attention about 10
years ago, when an 18-year-old woman called 911 on her cell phone after she was abducted
from a
mall in Rochester, N.Y.

Operators listened as Jennifer Koon was sexually assaulted, as she pleaded for help -- and
as she was
killed. But they had no way of finding her.

Late last month, her father, New York State Assemblyman David Koon, helped pass
legislation there
providing money to help create a 911 system that could have located his daughter. "That
technology
wasn't around for Jenny's case," said Koon, whose entry into politics was spurred by his
daughter's
death. "But it's available now, and we should be able to use it."

The issue particularly resonates because many people treat cell phones like modern-day
life preservers,
clutching them on dark streets, keeping one in the car and working them into emergency
plans for
coping with a terrorist attack. Nearly 30 percent of all 911 calls nationwide are made
from cell phones,
said Jim Goerke of the National Emergency Number Association, and that figure climbs to
about 50
percent in big cities, including Washington.

But the image of security is sometimes illusory. In the case of the Chillum fire, the
neighbor's urgent call
for help was transmitted into the night air to be captured by a nearby cell tower. The
problem was that
Chillum is so close to the District that the signal was up for grabs by whichever tower
caught it first. In
that case, it happened to be the D.C. tower, and District police received the call.

The 911 dispatcher sent the call to D.C.'s fire department. By the time authorities
figured out that the
fire on 17th Avenue was in Maryland, the blaze had ripped through much of the house, said
Alan Etter,
spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Services Department. Killed in the blaze were
8-year-old
Christian Romero; his 13-year-old sister, Veronica; and their mother, Maria Romero, 42.
The children's
10-year-old brother managed to leap out a second-story window but suffered severe burns.
He still has
nightmares of his sister's screams for help, a relative said.

Misdirected emergency calls are common in the District, which shares borders with numerous

jurisdictions, said Peter Roy, a deputy to the District's chief technology officer. In
Friendship Heights,
"calls usually go to both Bethesda and D.C. 911, and both agencies end up responding," he
said.

If the Chillum caller had dialed 911 on a traditional phone, police and fire departments
would have been
able to pinpoint the location and send help to the address that automatically popped up on
their
computer screens. This is the safety net created for 911 years ago, so that even if the
caller passed out
or was attacked before talking to police, rescuers still knew where to go.

The safety net for 911 calls via cell phones has many more holes.

In 1999, the FCC tried to fix the discrepancy, enacting regulations over a period of years
that would
give cell phone 911 calls the same safety features as land-line calls. First, cell phones
would be required
to have the technology to display their numbers when they pop up on caller ID. In turn,
911 call centers
would be required to upgrade their phones so they can read these numbers. It's a feature
present in
most new household and business phones, but it's not part of the old 911 system.

The second, more sophisticated requirement mandates that cell phone companies start making
their
phones with Global Positioning System technology that can pinpoint a phone's location
within about 100
yards, and local governments must have the equipment to read that information. Both phases
were to be
completed by 2005. But most carriers missed last October's deadline for making their
call-back
numbers always show up on 911 calls. Although many of the companies -- including Verizon
Wireless,
Cingular Wireless, Sprint Corp. and AT&T Wireless -- have the technology to comply, they
were
granted waivers after they told the FCC that their compliance wouldn't do much good
because many
local governments don't have the necessary upgrades.

Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Montgomery, Anne Arundel and Frederick counties can capture
the
number of any 911 call made on a cell phone within each jurisdiction, but they still
cannot pinpoint the
location of the call, said Larry McDonnell, a spokesman for Sprint PCS. The District will
not be able to
capture calls until November, McDonnell said. Currently, no jurisdictions in the
Washington region can
locate a cell phone calling for help.

In fact, very few places across the country have the capacity to pinpoint calls made from
wireless
phones -- the state of Rhode Island and Spartanburg, S.C., are two in a handful.

"Although the current 911 system covers 99 percent of the U.S. population, only 1 percent
of the
nation's emergency jurisdictions can identify the location of calls made from wireless
phones," John
Melcher, president of the National Emergency Number Association, said this month in
testimony before
the Senate communications subcommittee. The association is a nonprofit group dedicated to
implementing 911 as the nation's universal emergency number.

But Roy, of the District's technology office, cautioned that even those two improvements
will not offer a
"technological panacea." Cell phone calls to 911 likely will still be vulnerable to
problems.

In rural Montana, for example, pinpointing a call within 100 yards would typically
identify the caller.
"But that's useless in a dense, urban location like the District," Roy said. "Let's say
you can determine
that the call came from the Farragut North Metro stop. That's a lot of ground to cover
before you can
find one person calling for help."

Indeed, the pinpointing ability might not have helped a resident of a densely populated
District
neighborhood who collapsed in the hallway of his apartment building last month after he
was stabbed
while trying to quiet a fight.

For 30 minutes, relatives and friends of Yong Chen, a 20-year-old Chinese immigrant who
lived in
Chinatown, frantically dialed 911. But an ambulance arrived only after one of the few
residents in the
building who still uses a land line called 911.

It was too late. Chen died shortly after arriving at the hospital. His attacker fled, and
police have not
been able to find him, although they have named a suspect.

City officials said they cannot disclose what happened to the cell phone calls in the Chen
case because
the records are part of the homicide investigation. But his family members said they ache
at the memory
of Chen bleeding to death while their calls for help repeatedly failed.

In addition to the pinpointing issue, which is likely to persist in some areas even when
Global Positioning
System advances are made, there are other problems that likely won't go away when the new
rules are
implemented.

As Roy noted, some buildings always get bad reception, and there are gaps between cell
phone towers
where signals can rarely be harnessed.

But there are steps that cell phone callers to 911 can do to help themselves. One critical
piece of
advice: Provide the cell phone number and location to the 911 operator in case the signal
is lost.

"And when you accidentally dial 911 on your cell phone, don't just hang up," said D.C.
police Inspector
Ira Grossman, head of emergency/non-emergency communications. "Say: 'Sorry, I dialed by
mistake,'
so we're not wondering what happened to the call."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54802-2003Mar30.html