State Legislature Passes 911 Bill
By Larry Swasey March 05, 2003
zwire.com
The bill to rush monies already collected for enhanced wireless 911 services was passed by the New York State Legislature last week. The bill was introduced by Assemblywoman Patricia Eddington (D-Patchogue) and intends to expedite the use of the approximate $20 million collected in 2002 through wireless service taxes for improving the antiquated 911 systems so they can receive the appropriate information from cellular phones.
The bill would send the monies directly to the public safety answering points in New York State, a set of the 5,200 places across the nation where people answer 911 calls.
When 911 systems were built, wireless phones were science fiction fodder and it was not imagined a 911 operator would not be able to capture the area code and location of the 911 caller, since the caller's location was fixed and the area code was known. Cell phone users have been paying an average of $1.20 to $1.50 every month to improve the systems through taxes on their wireless bill.
Eddington has said she was spurred on to author the bill by the four teenagers who took a boat out on Long Island Sound during a cold winter night and died in the water off of City Island recently while unable to describe their location to 911 operators.
However, even if the PSAP center that answered the 911 call from the teens that night had been upgraded to meet the current requirement by the FCC for enhanced 911 phase I, the additional information that night would have been the phone number of the cell site through which the call was received, according to experts. The cellular carrier used that night was equipped to meet enhanced 911 guidelines.
Enhanced 911 phase I was due to be implemented by October 2001, with E911 phase II, which will actually allow the location of the cell phone caller to be known within 300 meters in some cases, due to be implemented by October 2005, as per order of the Federal Communications Committee.
The movement to deploy E911 at the PSAPs has gained some momentum on the national level as U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) announced the launch of the E911 Congressional Caucus that, among other things, will be used to create, according to a Clinton press release, "ubiquitous deployment of enhanced services and systems. Enhanced 911 automatically provides a callback number and location of the caller."
It was unclear if the caucus, which includes Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana) and representatives Anna Eshoo (D-California) and John Shimkus (R-Illinois), would try to change the FCC timetable for E911 deployment, as Clinton's office failed to return calls.
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