By Ryan Knutson
Software on Apple Inc.'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.
"It is really frustrating to know that my kids can order pizza
and they know exactly where they are, and I call for Uber and they
know exactly where I am," said Christy Williams, who runs a 911
system in the counties that surround Dallas, "but that it can't be
used for lifesaving methods."
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.
"The moment you pick up that call, you have to start
interviewing: 'Where are you?'" Ms. Eyman said. "All they want is
to just get some help. They don't understand why you're asking all
these questions. And it creates an angst and a lack of
confidence."
U.S. regulations require wireless carriers to deliver cellphone
location data to 911. In the 1990s, some carriers relied on
triangulation among nearby cell towers. They later pushed phone
manufacturers to install GPS chips for more accurate location
estimates.
GPS relies on satellites and can take up to 30 seconds or more
to establish a position, so it doesn't work well indoors, where
rooftops interfere with the signal. That has become a problem as
most Americans ditch landlines and use cellphones only.
That rough estimate of location that 911 responders receive is
in contrast with the blue dot users see on Google Maps, which often
shows a smartphone's location down to about 15 meters.
When smartphones came around in the late 2000s, Google and then
Apple enhanced mapping technologies by corroborating the GPS
location with data from inside the phone, such as proximity to
Wi-Fi hot spots and cell towers, and the barometric pressure, which
indicates altitude.
Smartphone sensors continually monitor this information and
occasionally relay it back to Google or Apple. As a result, the
tech firms' ability to determine a smartphone's location quickly
surpassed that of wireless carriers. But carriers and the tech
giants didn't immediately work to ensure that enhanced data was
available to 911.
"I think there is an institutional reluctance by Big Tech to not
want to formally enter into the public safety world," said retired
Rear Adm. David Simpson, who oversaw emergency management and
cybersecurity at the Federal Communications Commission during the
Obama administration.
"They will do all sorts of things, outside of any formal
obligation, that are very useful," Mr. Simpson said, "but without
it being formal, it's very difficult for a public safety
organization -- police, fire, ambulance, 911 -- to really rely on
its being there all the time."
Representatives of Google and Apple said they were committed to
helping public safety.
In 2014, after talking about the 911 problem over lunch, a group
of Google engineers on the Android location team decided to look
into it. One engineer, Akshay Kannan, decided to dedicate his "20%
time," which is the free time Google allots employees to
experiment, to find a way to provide the more precise location data
to 911 operators. The project was code-named Thunderbird.
Mr. Kannan started by attending a 911 conference in Denver. "The
first thing we heard everyone say was: 'Before we'll even ask,
'911, what's your emergency,' now the standard is to ask, 'what's
your location,'" he said. "It was extremely clear this was a huge
problem."
Officials at BT Group PLC, which manages the U.K.'s emergency
response system, were already tackling the problem and quickly
agreed to work with Google. In mid-2016, they jointly launched a
technology that improved location accuracy of emergency calls down
to a radius of just a few yards. It is now in use in at least 10
countries, including the U.K., Austria and Estonia.
Apple, meanwhile, developed a technology that also made its rich
device-location information available to wireless carriers, under a
program called HELO, for Hybridized Emergency Location.
U.S. wireless carriers, however, moved much more slowly, partly
because regulators weren't spurring them along. Historically, U.S.
regulations only applied to outdoor location accuracy, where GPS
works better. In 2015, the FCC passed a rule requiring carriers to
deliver more accurate location data for 80% of calls by 2021.
AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc. recently started using
Apple's technology, meaning calling 911 on an iPhone on one of
those networks could deliver more accurate location information.
All four major U.S. carriers -- AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon
Communications Inc. and Sprint -- are testing Google's technology,
and T-Mobile says it plans to activate it soon.
Neither Google nor Apple offers a blanket solution to the 911
problem, according to telecom engineers. Their methods are
different and each approach works only on their own devices, they
say. Carriers are also wary of Silicon Valley's culture of
experimentation for critical public safety services, the companies
say.
"The commercial location solutions...are built for a
different-use case than 911," said Matthew Gerst, an assistant vice
president of regulatory affairs for CTIA, the wireless industry
trade group. The smartphone data is still just an estimate, so it
doesn't deliver an exact street address like many in the 911
community want, he added.
Instead, wireless carriers have focused on building from scratch
their own joint database of physical addresses where Wi-Fi hot
spots are located. The system, called the National Emergency
Address Database, or NEAD, will be similar to the Wi-Fi databases
Google and Apple use.
But unlike Google and Apple, which update their databases
automatically when phones pass by Wi-Fi hot spots, the carriers
plan to cajole companies that own large numbers of Wi-Fi hot spots,
such as cable companies and large building owners, to input hot
spot addresses manually. And they eventually want ordinary citizens
to do so, too.
Carriers hope the NEAD will be operational in late 2018. The
database is currently empty, but is aiming to have 30 million hot
spots in the top 25 markets by 2021. Wireless carriers won't be
allowed to use the data for anything other than directing 911
calls.
Until then, 911 operators continue to wait. Ms. Eyman, who runs
the 911 center outside Denver, recalled a situation recently where
a young child fell from a window and a babysitter calling on a
cellphone didn't know the home's address.
"She was looking for numbers on the mailbox, on the outside of
the house, " Ms. Eyman said. "Anything we can do to reduce a delay
on an emergency, a life-or-death situation, would be such an
improvement."
Write to Ryan Knutson at ryan.knutson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 07, 2018 07:14 ET (12:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024