…and don’t rely on VoIP over a public wi-fi system. Those are my conclusions after reading the federal document discussed below.
A Federal Notice of Proposed Rule Making on wireless 911 and “E911” requirements was published by the FCC in November 2010. The January 3, 2011 deadline was extended to January 19 after a coalition of major public safety and wireless industry groups requested one, arguing that ‘‘[a] short-term extension is in the public interest to allow interested parties to meaningfully address the issues raised in this proceeding.’’
The FCC seeks
•“comment on proposals to improve wireless location accuracy,”
•“comment on whether we should require interconnected VoIP service providers to automatically identify the geographic location of a customer without the customer’s active cooperation,” and
•“comment on the applicability of 911 and E911 requirements to additional wireless communications services, devices and applications.”
The notice highlights the “limitations of existing location determining technologies in use by carriers” which can “lead to variations of up to 300 meters, or more.” It covers questions of handset-based v. network-based technologies, 3G and 4G systems, indoor v. outdoor calls, the “z-axis” problem (pinpointing callers’ vertical locations in multi-story structures!), and E911 tracking problems as callers roam into areas using other wireless technology protocols.
VoIP calls in public areas seem to have a number of technical issues, and small to intermediate-size transmitting devices (femtocells, picocells, microcells, and distributed Antenna systems) present issues and opportunities: “Since carriers are deploying these network components, it may be very helpful to consider the prospect of leveraging these devices to enhance location accuracy…For example, a femtocell could be viewed as typically installed in a semi-permanent manner at a particular home or office, that could thus be programmed with an exact address, or even have an embedded A–GPS chip. If that address could be transported with a 911 call, that would lead to significant improvement in location accuracy, akin to the location quality of wireline networks. Similarly, the location of a picocell alone could provide greater location accuracy for 911 calls handled by a picocell. Are there opportunities for these network elements to provide a means to transmit more accurate location information? If so, how can we best incorporate these capabilities into the location information transmitted with a wireless 911 call?”
Anyone reading the FCC’s long list of questions and issues for technical study with respect to 911 and E911 calls should resolve to never have an emergency in locations where the only options are wireless or VoIP 911 calls.