mobloc8

Here’s a tragic story from the Chicago Tribune about a motorbike rider who died because his mobile phone calls to 911 couldn’t be traced: Biker Dies When Cell Calls Can’t Be Traced.

Unfortunately, the technical aspects of the article are quite poorly researched. For example, the article claims that in order to be located, “a cell phone user’s telephone also has to have more recent, compatible technology”. I guess they’re referring to A-GPS here, but there are plenty of other ways to locate a phone accurately enough to enable a successful search and rescue. Technologies like E-OTD, TA/NMR, and U-TDOA all work fine with older phones.

The article is correct, though, in highlighting how slow some network operators have been in rolling out their E-911 systems. As McHenry County Commissioner Mary Lou Zierer says, “You don’t realize the importance until something like this happens, where a gentleman probably could have been saved if we could have pinpointed him.”

E-OTD Whitepaper from ZDNet.

E-OTD is one of a small number of location determination technologies adopted by US cellular operators to meet the FCC E-911 mandate. In E-OTD, the mobile handset or device performs the calculation to determine its location based on signals received from cellular base stations. However, those operators in the US who have adopted E-OTD in their GSM networks have so far been unable to meet the FCC’s location performance requirements and have been granted more time to make E-OTD work.

Even this extra time may not be enough, because neither the cellular operators nor their technology suppliers appear to have identified the root cause(s) of E-OTD’s problems, and hence there is no timescale or budget to fix them. AT&T Wireless has already raised the possibility that even the extension which the FCC has granted it may not be enough. E-OTD’s problems are now causing alarm in the emergency services community, and there are calls from some bodies for the technology to be scrapped. Meanwhile, in Europe no operators have plans for a full implementation of E-OTD in their networks.