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Why Uber Can Find You but 911 Can't (wsj.com)
Accurate location data is on smartphones, so why don't more wireless carriers use it to locate emergency callers? From a report, shared by a reader: Software on Apple's iPhones and Google's Android smartphones help mobile apps like Uber and Facebook to pinpoint a user's location, making it possible to order a car, check in at a local restaurant or receive targeted advertising. But 911, with a far more pressing purpose, is stuck in the past. U.S. regulators estimate as many as 10,000 lives could be saved each year if the 911 emergency dispatching system were able to get to callers one minute faster. Better technology would be especially helpful, regulators say, when a caller can't speak or identify his or her location. After years of pressure, wireless carriers and Silicon Valley companies are finally starting to work together to solve the problem. But progress has been slow. Roughly 80% of the 240 million calls to 911 each year are made using cellphones, according to a trade group that represents first responders. For landlines, the system shows a telephone's exact address. But it can register only an estimated location, sometimes hundreds of yards wide, from a cellphone call. That frustration is now a frequent source of tension during 911 calls, said Colleen Eyman, who oversees 911 services in Arvada, Colo., just outside Denver.
I used to install 911 systems. The biggest problem is the RBOCs (phone companies). They've refused to upgrade their systems to allow any meaningful data to directly reach their systems. Many 911 systems out there today rely on old analog connections that can't carry enhanced data except for caller-id. The 911 systems simply use the caller-id to match a location.
Want to know how cell phones work when you call 911?
The user dials the number associated with emergency services on their phone. The phone gets handed to the cell company. At the same time, the GPS unit is activated on the phone and the phone attempts to get a lock. GPS information is sent to the cell company emergency services "smart router".
Meanwhile, the call gets routed to the PSAP. It uses the address of the closest tower to find out which correct PSAP is supposed to answer. The PSAP answers and gets connected to an operator. There, they are given the location of the antenna/tower that the user called through. SOME cell providers offer a link (depending on the software they are using) to get additional information about the call, which often requires pulling up seperate software and/or a website to get the location from the smart router. The location /may/ be updating in real time, or it may not be. I've seen many cases where the GPS didn't get a lock at first and the location pulled up in the smart router never gets updated beyond that. Oh, and if you use a cell company that hasn't directly partnered with your local PSAP, the operator may only get the street address of the closest tower.
The phone companies have the technology to make this work, and make it work well. It would require the RBOCs to upgrade their networks a bit and provide advanced services to the 911 centers. It would also require the police, phone companies and 911 centers to want to work together and do things the right way. Right now there are a lot of people who think their technology is right and that everybody else should just simply use it. What ends up is that we have a bunch of different software, all cobbled together in ways that make the system really, really bad.
Consumers tend to like apps as the solution to get to 911 services. Sure, they can get advanced services (like a real GPS location), and other nice things, but it relies on a bunch of technologies that are designed to work "at best effort". If you don't have data service and you launch the app, it won't work. If you call 911 and don't have phone service, your phone will actually roam to anybody and everybody's network you have a radio for and place the call.