Verizon Wireless Asks for More Time to Pinpoint Emergency Calls
[FAC: I recently read an article about cell phone jamming: msnbc.com , see box titled "stop the chatter" for some wild stuff. For certain, jamming would impede or block entirely emergency calling, as well as routine jabber. Hence, it is unlawful to jam phones in the US. But sales of jamming equipment is running high here in the States and elsewhere throughout the world -they are not illegal in Canada, yet - nonetheless. Elsewhere I've been in discussions with commercial building landlords and carriers whose buildings and territories, respectively, have inherent "dead zones" within them, for one reason or another, which they have not been able to remedy without spending relatively large amounts of money. In the case of landlords, for the installation of in-building repeatered wireless distribution systems, i.e., a variant of the "leaky feeder" systems that are installed in mines, tunnels, subways <see Andrew Corp>. Or, in the case of carriers, by sometimes radically re-engineering or adding to their network design. How forcefully should pressure be exerted on building landlords and carriers to ensure that emergency calls from cell phones can be placed from 'anywhere' within their controlled domains, and that those calls be pin-pointable through GPS techniques? The 911 article follows:]
Company joins other carriers in request
ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 26 — Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest mobile phone carrier, is asking the government for more time to install technology that will allow public safety personnel to pinpoint callers who dial 911.
THE COMPANY joins other top industry players, including AT&T, Cingular, Nextel and VoiceStream, in seeking a delay to the October deadline for adding this function to its system. The Federal Communications Commission had mandated that carriers provide this capability so that emergency personnel could hone in on wireless callers.
About 45 million Americans made 911 calls from their wireless phones last year, according to public safety groups. That poses a challenge for officials who can’t pinpoint caller locations, since people using cell phones are on the move and their number doesn’t correspond to a fixed address.
Some wireless providers can now provide location within broad ranges, from city blocks to miles in rural areas, and callback numbers.
But the commission said carriers needed to add technology so that 911 callers could be tracked with more precision. The least precise option allowed by the FCC would still give public safety personnel location information that is within about 328 feet of the caller 67 percent of the time and within about 984 feet 95 percent of the time.
The agency gave companies the option of meeting the mandate by adding location technology to their networks or to the handsets that consumers carry.
Verizon originally had planned to add the technology to all of its networks.
But after some trials, the company decided it could reach consumers more quickly by selecting the handset option instead. In a filing with the commission, Verizon Wireless said it needed more time to implement this system.
“Only now are technically feasible, complete solutions starting to become available, but this is not in time for Verizon Wireless, or it believes any other wireless carrier, to meet the deadlines in the rules,” the company wrote in a filing with the agency.
The company expects to start selling handsets with the location technology in December and anticipates that 100 percent of its new activated handsets will have the technology by the end of 2003.
The commission has only granted VoiceStream a waiver. An FCC spokesperson said each request for an extended deadline would be reviewed on an individual basis. |
