Calling 911 from a cell phone and having the location appear for police or firefighters seems like a great idea, but in the nation's capital such wireless emergency calls are not working as envisioned.
According to Julius Genachowski, the top telecom regulator official, the system doesn't work as intended and the locations of users are being redirected to locations close by, but not specific to, where the call originates.
A few years ago, shortly after becoming the country's top telecom regulator, Genachowski went to Fairfax, Va., to learn about how 911 dispatchers function when a cell phone user calls in. The results were not too positive. And they remain unchanged today.
The official spent a day with the dispatchers, and when he tested his own emergency call, it showed he was located at a Costco across the street and not at the police station. That's not good news for emergency services, who need to rely on location-based data to deliver needed services.
The system even when "re-bid" to refresh data still showed that Genachowski was located at the back of the store by the poulty and meat section.
"It moved him from where he was in the store up to where they sell the pizzas and the hot dogs," said Steve Souder, the director of the Fairfax call center. "That was closer than where he was the first time, but still a quarter-mile away from where he was."
Public safety officials have long reported this location problem is widespread, and not just a problem for the Washington, D.C., area.
While dispatchers still rely largely on the caller giving a specific location, the hope is that by using location finders individuals who are incapacitated or unable to talk when they call 911 would be able to get immediate assistance. But that scenario is still not within reach.
According to reports from the D.C. area, of the nearly 400,000 emergency calls made during a six-month period in 2013, less than 10 percent were accurately located using a cell phone.
