Left to right: Trey Forgety, Steve Souder, Mary Boyd & Walt Magnussen. Photos by Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers
We almost take 911 for granted and assume our calls will go through. If we make that call from a landline, our address is part of the information that the nation’s approximately 6,500 emergency call centers give first responders. But some 70 percent of 911 calls in the U.S. are now made from cell phones and getting exact location data, especially indoors, is hard. Emergency personnel told lawmakers on Wednesday that next-generation 911 has the ability to fix that problem and more.
Current 911 technology dates to the 1960s and 1970s. National Emergency Number Association Director of Governmental Affairs Trey Forgety told members of the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee “We need next-gen 911 now.” Otherwise, he said during a hearing on NG911, “deployment costs, if the technology is delayed, will explode.”
Steve Souder, former director of the Fairfax County, VA 911 system represented the Maryland Emergency Number (911) Systems Board. “Cell technology integrates well with the legacy network but it does not bring the absolute location of that call. In a previous hearing in this room, I tried calling 911. It identified me as calling from Independence Ave. That’s not a good thing if you’re having a heart attack.”
Next-gen or “NG” 911 can support texts, video, data and more. It can re-route calls easier than they can be now and map someone’s location. It will also be easier to defend NG911 from cybersecurity attacks, experts said.
“We take it for granted that we can text one another, but few 911 call centers have the ability to receive 911 texts,” said Mary Boyd, Vice-President, Regulatory, Policy and External Affairs for West Safety Services, on behalf of the Industry Council for Emergency Response Technologies. NG911 can give rescue pilots information about fuel tanks on the ground or utility lines where they’re flying, for example, she said.
Boyd and other experts told lawmakers NG911 should be part of larger discussions surrounding broadband deployment — both connected to any infrastructure bill and as part of FirstNet. The contract for the $6.5 billion nationwide public safety broadband network is due to be awarded soon (see related story above).
Funding is a huge issue for NG911. No one who testified had a handle on how much it will take to upgrade the call centers, though they do believe moving to an IP-based infrastructure will bring costs down as data can be shared on servers instead of replicating every piece of gear that now exists in each call center. Also, some states divert money collected from taxpayers that’s supposed to be for 911. That has to stop, experts agreed, urging lawmakers to use their muscle to make that happen.
Companies are building so-called “bridge” technology now that will connect legacy technology to the NG911 IP-based technology, said Dr. Walt Magnussen, Director, Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center at Texas A&M University. The FCC and NIST “are trying to figure out a better way to improve indoor accuracy without breaking the bank.” Many locations on the market today are too expensive, he said. “If we could find the perfect in-building location solution” that was free “we would have done it,” said Magnussen, adding he doesn’t believe that exists.
March 30, 2017
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