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E-911: Seeking a Location


Officials from states across the nation will gather in Portland this weekend to tackle regulatory problems, including telecom and electricity utilities. I’m not a telecommunications professional but I can’t help but wonder if we’re getting our money’s worth.

Let’s make telecommunications networks efficient and interoperable – even beneficial to the general public. I don’t see why public and private interests can’t work something out.

Perhaps the value of dedicated, expensive (and isolated) radio networks should be questioned — we’re paying for it, after all.

  • The Oregon Legislature drained $9 million from 9-1-1 tax reserves to balance the state budget. Nearly $3 million of the 9-1-1 reserves tapped for the budget deal had been set aside for the first stage of installing enhanced 9-1-1, or E911, systems in the state’s five largest counties. Officials estimate there is about $12 million in the reserves and say money not used to balance the state budget will be spent on consolidating 9-1-1 centers in counties with far-flung operations.
  • The Oregonian editorializes; “No one in Oregon is getting the service they signed up for, because the state Legislature stole the money from the 9-1-1 fund to pay other bills.”
  • Today I visited ODOT’s command center in downtown Portland. Traffic reporters and dispatchers watch a wall of monitors and 70-80 interactive (P/T/Z) cameras. I was told they use GPS/CDPD transmitter to locate their Corridor Management Teams (COMET) emergency vehicles and are investigating GPRS alternatives (so is NextBus). Portland is cloning their county-wide traffic command center, statewide. It was based on open source ITS software developed by the state of Georgia.

    When I mentioned that Flarion incorporates GPS, allows faster data rates, and might allow cooperation between agencies, the eyes glazed over on my guide. Sharing communications resources, I gather, is NOT part of the program.

    In related news:

  • Here’s the FCC’s Frequency Allotments. Joe Scanner, the NorthWest SCANner enthusiasts Group, and the Oregon Electronic Order of Battle list frequencies used by Portland Police & Fire, Tri-Met, Portland Airport, Oregon Railroads, Life Flight Helicopter Frequencies, Oregon Live’s streaming scanners, and Portland Area Media Frequencies. The Clickable US Scanner Map, Strong Signals, and Radio Scanner WebRing have more.
  • Cellular antennas may be sprouting on many of the 51,000 utility poles in Portland neighborhoods under new regulations proposed to the City Council.
  • GPS Trackers like PowerLoc and Airbiquity’s aqLink can track your bike, bar pilot or the Portland streetcar. Location Based Services include LocatioNet provides Vector Maps for wireless operators and Portland-based Qsent which can hail a taxi. GPS trackers might allow synched VR Scapes to “see through walls”. Standardized, open Web 3D will provide new vistas.
  • Gate5, sells its “People Finder” program to wireless carriers, which lets users of handheld devices pull up maps with the location of other cell-phone users. People must opt into the program. But Gate5 has also gotten in trouble. According to Wired Magazine, about six months ago, they demonstrated mapped whether mobile phones were switched on or off without informing the subscribers who were being monitored. The company was forced to take it down.
  • The FCC denyied a request for more privacy rules, concerning the use of customer information, notice, consent, security and integrity of that data.

    Location Based Services ARE important. They include the E-911 service for identifying the location of cellular callers and more routine vehicle location devices used by businesses. Location services is becoming a big business.

    Mesh Networks and Flarion don’t need GPS vehicle tracking (with additional cellular fees). E-911 accuracy is built right in and it could have dual use for police, fire, city, and commercial users. Revenue from commerical use could pay for the infrastructure. That lowers the cost and increases the utility for everyone.

    Mesh Networks, SkyPilot, CoWave Networks , Nokia’s Rooftop Mesh and Nextel’s Flarion might deliver multi-media to wearcam teams on the ground.

    Meshed SWAT teams backboned with 3G cellular or 4G IP-based networks may have lots of advantages: (1) you eliminate isolated islands of incompatibile radios, (2) mesh radios have GPS-accurate location detection without the expense of dedicated GPS/CDPD or GPRS trackers for hundreds of cars (at $20/mo), (3) you save millions using the public infrastructure, (4) you achieve interoperability (5) the 4G wireless infrastructure might even MAKE money since it might be leased to commercial ISPs who could pay to have access to a mobile wireless infrastructure.

    TeleCommunication Systems and SnapTrack, a subsidiary of Qualcomm, have a new platform for enhanced emergency 911 (E911) cell phones. E-911 will be a requirement of all wireless carriers under federal law.

    The FCC plans to tag cell phones so emergency operators know where a call is coming from. E-911 has two phases. Phase I rules require the telephone number of the originator of a wireless 911 call and the location of the cell site or base station receiving a wireless 911 call. Phase II rules require wireless carriers to begin providing more precise Automatic Location Identification (ALI), often with GPS.

    Nextel Communications, today announced the creation of Wireless E-911 Readiness Fund, which will coordinate the dissemination of $25 million to the public safety community to improve wireless enhanced 911 (E-911) services across the country. The PSAP Readiness Fund will provide grants to organizations dedicated to the deployment of wireless enhanced 911 and will foster the development and timely implementation of advanced location-based emergency services across the U.S., particularly in areas underserved by modern communications

    Earlier this year, Oregon’s Office of Emergency Management announced the launch of Phase II E-911 wireless services in Eastern Oregon. Edge Wireless is the carrier providing the services, and Airbiquity provides the GPS snap-ons for mobile phones and the server software used at the public safety answering points (screen shot). Phones with integrated GPS will soon be mandated by the FCC. Carriers can locate callers either through network-based technology that triangulates a caller’s location based on proximity to cell towers (Phase I), or through a phone with an integrated GPS unit (Phase II). Phase II phones with automatic location identification (ALI) were originally mandated to reach 100% by the end of 2002 but the program has been delayed.

    The four-county region is by far the largest geographic area in the United States to implement Phase II for wireless users. Nearly one-third of all accident victims in rural areas do not arrive at the hospital within an hour, largely due to the inability of public safety providers to quickly locate them and reach the scene. Some 30% of the 150 million 9-1-1 calls were made using cell phones, in 2000. BTW, 511 is a national number for traffic information. Several states have hot lines with the latest traffic info although Oregon is not one.

    Here’s a rundown of the most popular methods of position location capabilities being built into cellular networks from www.Unstrung.com.

    Each of the methods used to obtain location information has its own pros and cons. Operators usually choose a variation of one or more of the systems, depending upon which application best suits the legacy network already in place.

    Why not a “4G” system similar to Nextel’s Flarion? It could deliver MOBILE broadband from 500 Kbps-1 Mbps. Why waste $7 million on a new narrowband radio network that creates more islands of incompatibility? Why pay cellular companies huge bills to track vehicles via CDPD/GPRS? Why not consolidate duplicate dispatchers from 6-8 different bureaus (like water, transportation, sewer, etc), into one unit like Tacoma, Washington does.

    And why not deliver broadband to the public?

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    Posted by Sam Churchill on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2002 at 6:12 am.

    2 Responses to “E-911: Seeking a Location”

    [...] The UK’s Celldar project allows surveillance of anyone, at any time and anywhere there is a phone signal. The technology ’sees’ the shapes made when radio waves emitted by mobile phone masts meet an obstruction. Signals bounced back by immobile objects, such as walls or trees are filtered out by Celldar gear. This allows anything moving, such as cars or people, to be tracked. Passively. It can’t identify anyone — it simply displays moving blobs. Like radar. DailyWireless related articles include; Rescue By Cell Triangulation Satellite Tracking, Location By Triangulation – Not, Tracking Bryon and E-911: Seeking a Location. [...]

    Left by dailywireless.org » Cellular Triangulation on December 8th, 2006

    [...] More information on UAVs is E-911: Seeking a Location.available at UAV News, UAV Center, the UAV Forum, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Blog, Defense Review, Aerovironment, FireScout Helicopter, Micropilot, NASA’s UAV Site, UV-Online, the Paris-based Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, and the UAV Concept Of Operations. [...]

    Left by dailywireless.org » Mountain Rescue UAVs on December 15th, 2006

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