FCC To Allow Texting To 911

tekgoblin writes "The FCC is looking into allowing people to report incidents to 911 via SMS from their mobile phones. They are also considering mobile video to show the 911 service what is going on. The current 911 system handles around 230 million calls per year with most of the calls being from mobile phones. One situation influenced this move to allow texting to 911 was the Virginia Tech shooting. 'The technological limitations of 9-1-1 can have tragic, real-world consequences,' the release said. 'During the 2007 Virginia Tech campus shooting, students and witnesses desperately tried to send texts to 9-1-1 that local dispatchers never received. If these messages had gone through, first responders may have arrived on the scene faster with firsthand intelligence about the life-threatening situation that was unfolding.'"

Comments

What the hell

[Arancaytar]

Without interacting with the dispatcher, you can't be sure that you've provided the necessary info. Talking is faster than typing, even for a T9 wizard. Is there any reason why you should text a 911 responder instead of just calling them?

Re:What the hell

[Zironic]

Texting is a lot more silent if a criminal is nearby and might hear you, also a lot of people are idiots.

Re:What the hell

[DrgnDancer]

For precisely the reason in the summary. If you're inside on a bank robbery or other hostage type situation you can send a text in near complete silence. Talking to a dispatcher will make noise and potentially give away your position (and the fact that you're in contact with the outside). It's a limited use case, but happens often enough to justify the relatively small expense I would think.

Re:What the hell

[jra]

Yeah, only if you're hunkered down behind a desk, hoping the gunman won't notice you used Old Spice when you showered this morning.

Oh, and don't forget to turn your ringer off...

This will fail on false alarms, just as would the slightly more intelligent "provide a mobile-friendly webpage" idea. Also no way to tag the GPS location on it.

Re:What the hell

[Doc Ruby]

The necessary info is almost always "I need the cops at location X". Usually just the call itself, which carries location info (E911 from mobiles), is sufficient. But sometimes telling the cops that the emergency is armed, perhaps heavily, the number of people, or some other details, can help the first responders arrive better prepared to cope with the situation more quickly, safely and effectively. But it's also common for people in the emergency not to be able to talk, lest they tip off the people causing the emergency.

Re:What the hell

[commodore64_love]

If the dispatcher needs more info, they can always text back.

Besides with cellphone GPS, it pretty much provides everything that might be needed. "I'm being held hostage by a shooter at UVA!" plus the GPS will tell the dispatcher where to send police. IMHO it makes logical sense to tap the new techniques that texting and built-in cameras provide.

Re:What the hell

[pla]

Is there any reason why you should text a 911 responder instead of just calling them?

Oh, I dunno, perhaps because you don't want the guy with a gun across the hall to hear you calling the police, as per TFA? Because your steering wheel has crushed your larynx and you can't talk? Or hell, just because you don't want to give 27 forms of ID before they'll even listen to your problem (I personally love that one - God forbid anyone actually use 911 for a real emergency, you'd die before the operator stops asking for details like your college roommate's pet chinchilla's name)?

I agree that 99.9% of the time, you should just call instead of texting. But if that 0.1% makes a difference, why not allow it?

Re:What the hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so college students actually thought that you can TEXT to 911? WTF.

Re:What the hell

[tverbeek]

The more relevant question is: Is there any reason why 911 dispatchers should be unable to receive (and seemingly ignore) text messages?

Sure, an interactive phone conversation is ideal, but the nature of emergencies is that they are not ideal situations. The caller may not be able to talk. The caller may lose consciousness. The caller may be incoherent. They may have to immediately hang up. Dispatchers take the alert - whatever it consists of - and act based on what information they have. If someone sends a text message to 911 instead of calling, why shouldn't they be equipped to receive it (and respond to it)?

Re:What the hell

[Lumpy]

also a lot of people are idiots.

You win the prize! Don Pardo; tell him what he won!

Re:What the hell

[heikkile]

Here in Denmark we were taught that if the coverage is bad, as it often is at sea, a text message is more likely to make it through. Same might be the case with low battery situations, and even if speaking aloud is not safe, as could be the case in some shooting and hijacking situations. In some situations the background noise may make voice communications unreliable, and some accidents may even disturb your ability to speak... Many reasons to allow the use of text messages.

Re:What the hell

[jonbryce]

Apparently there's far too many of those calls, and most of them are false alarms for that to be any use. Or at least that is the case in England where you call emergency services using the English number 999 or the EU number 112.

Re:What the hell

[faedle]

Um... "GPS" doesn't mean what you think it does in this context. To most consumers, "GPS" has come to mean any location-aware device, regardless of the methodology of geolocation.

Most cell phones, especially smart ones like Android and iOS based phones, are able to provide disturbingly precise fixes without using the satellite constellation. It is completely possible to get a reasonable fix from cell tower triangulation.

Even then, cell phone GPS chips have gotten pretty good at scraping the signal out of the noise. With assistance from the tower triangulation, it is possible to get a fairly precise fix with only one or two GPS satellites visible. Add to that a possible WiFi signal location, and you've got many ways to get a fix indoors good enough for 911.

So, yes, "GPS" does work indoors now.

Re:What the hell

[arivanov]

Welcome to the UK then.

The instructions to the dispatchers in cases like this used to be that they ignore you and hang up. This has thankfully recently changed as a result of a inquiry on a case where a girl was hijacked and called 999 (UK equivalent of 911) twice, got ignored twice and was raped and murdered. This has also happened more than once - 2003, 2004, 2007 are the well known cases which have made the national media.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/magazine/7748046.stm

However, IIRC even the new instructions which have been put in after this, still require the dispatcher to try to talk to you first which will make the phone speak and give away your position and the fact that you have dialed straight away (you really do not want your pants talking to you when you are looking down the barrel of a 9mm handgun). In addition to that nobody knows that you are not listened to and nobody knows that you are supposed to press a few numbers to indicate that you actually mean what you mean. And nobody knows the text number even if it is available in your area and it is not standardised internationally.

Compared vs that I would rather have texts to 112 (999/911 are handled by same call routing) anyday.

Re:What the hell

[RKenshin1]

Also, I found this tidbit out from working with our Sheriff's Office for the past 3 years.... Most of the time, a cell phone location can't be pinpointed. It does pinpoint on the mapping system, but it's a best guess based on triangulation between towers. Often, you have to assume it's within a square mile of where it shows on the mapping system. It may be a lot different in larger cities with a higher tower density, but that's been my experience with cell phone mapping. Definitely not what you see in the movies!

Re:What the hell

[peragrin]

um you do realise they can't track about 70% of the cell phones currently in use right.

triangulation takes time 10-15 minutes at a minimum. so unless your phone broadcasts e911 gps they don't know where you are. And even if you are broadcasting e911, that doesn't mean the 911 dispatcher you have connected to has similar abilities to receive it. The dispatcher won't hang up but can do nothing until someone tells them where they are. So no the cops won't be on their way until someone knows where to send them.

ultimately 911, operators should be able to receive and send phone calls, multimedia texts, GPS data from the phones, and have someone create a video phone standard and add that as well.

The more information one has the better. However most people don't realize just how little good information is actually told to 911.

Re:What the hell

[tverbeek]

Especially in a crisis situation, a college student whose friends all have SMS-enabled phones, and even their old-fashioned parents do, might not stop to consider that the people at 911 - who supposedly have state of the art technology - don't.

Re:What the hell

[bsDaemon]

My dad somehow managed to butt dial 911 while at the gun range one day... that was a fun adventure.

Re:What the hell

[Culture20]

How do you perform this "long tap"? :)

Your emoticon indicates you're joking, but somone probably does want to know, so:

tap (no pause) tap (no pause) tap (no pause)
tap (slight pause) tap (slight pause) tap (slight pause)
tap (no pause) tap (no pause) tap (long pause)
repeat

Re:What the hell

[Macrat]

My dad somehow managed to butt dial 911 while at the gun range one day... that was a fun adventure.

Many cell phones have an "emergency" button that will dial even when the keypad is locked. Makes it very easy to butt dial. (On my Sony Ericsson P800 it I learned it was the 8 key.)

Re:What the hell

[delinear]

This is about helping to determine the appropriate response, though. It could be the difference between "it's probably an accidental dial, we'll have someone pop around in a couple of hours while he's doing the doughnut run" and "armed siege in progress, we'll have SWAT there in munutes".

Re:What the hell

[ShanghaiBill]

I can only think of one situation: if you are hiding from an attacker.

I can think of a few more:

1. You are a deaf/mute.
2. You have a mouth or throat injury, and are unable to speak.
3. You are in a very noisy environment.

Re:Lets get with the times

[Arancaytar]

And Facebook.

"Add 911 as Friend"
"Poke 911"
"Write on 911's Wall"

(Five people liked your wall post: "just got mugged omg help ".)

Based on the summary

[OzPeter]

Based on the summary it seems that the text generation expected 911 to work the way their life works. It is a pity that texting 911 didn't work and it is interesting that it is being investigated

Sounds problematic

[C_Kode]

This sounds very problematic. First off, you can text from a computer without a phone number. Prank text messages sounds like it could be a real problem.

Second, dispatch can't ask distinct questions and anyone who works in IT that has dealt with people with problems, they aren't always clear and concise what is happening.

Re:Sounds problematic

[faedle]

You do realize that E911 has to know the phone number to know what dispatch center to route the "call" to. So, I suspect that it would likely cause a different problem: if you texted 911 from a phantom number, the text would simply be dropped because it would not know how to route the call.

Links to proprosed rule

[beetle496]

As announced in the Federal Register, this is actually a proposed rule which is open for public comments.

Re:It better be free and work with txting blocked

[rjstanford]

It better be 100% free and work with txting blocked and even if you have no sim.

If you think you need to make a 911 contact, but wouldn't if it would cost you a dime, then you don't need to make a 911 contact.

Problem solved.

Re:Text Pictures from the Highway

[rjstanford]

I wish I could text pictures or video from the highway .... I sometimes pull up next to them and take a picture with them with my phone .... Taking the picture isn't distracting to me as I drive ....

Ah... so when other people do it, its dangerous and they deserve to be reported to the police. But you, on the other hand, are a safe responsible phone user. Now it all makes sense.

Re:They're kidding, right?

[Dracker]

What good is a phone call... if you're unable to speak?

Re:It better be free and work with txting blocked

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you have a prepaid cellphone and are out of cash? 911 (etc. in other countries) are free to call for exactly this reason. It even works without having a SIM card in the phone (at least for European GSM phones) OR knowing any password - typing 112 or 911 will bypass this.

While the "no sim" or "locked phone" is less of a problem, "out of cash" is a bigger one.

311 needs this at least as much as 911

[cduffy]

Hmm. I'd care about this much more for 311 (that is, the non-emergency catch-all city services line). Email wouldn't be bad either.

Seriously -- being able to send a photo of a pothole or a tree branch hanging too close to the road or someone illegally parked in a bike lane on a curve after a steep downhill (yes, there's an area on my commute matching exactly that description) with a GPS tag on the photo and a line or two of text would be much more convenient than pulling over and spending 5 minutes trying to figure out the address, walk the operator through deciding how to file the ticket (is it an immediate safety hazard or a maybe-next-week issue?), etc.

Other way

[wraithguard01]

I'm a volunteer firefighter, and our dispatch center already sends us texts, as well as the typical page out over radio. That system proves incredibly useful for us. There is no way for us to text back through the system though, and the number is not a 911 number, it's a normal SMS short code number. Of course, going the other way is a different situation entirely, but my point is, I think that this shows that it is inevitable that texting is going to soon become a part of normal 911 operations.

I feel bad for the 911 operators

[Tr3vin]

I accidentally a whole coke bottle.