Nov 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Donny Jackson

Proposed rules won’t improve the accuracy of wireless 911 location technology.

In real estate, the industry mantra states that the most important factors in determining the value of property are “location, location, location.” This axiom also is familiar to public safety, as accurately determining the location of an incident is one of the first steps to enabling an effective response.

With an accurate incident location, the correct number and type of emergency-response resources can be dispatched to a site quickly — this is a typical scenario when a 911 caller uses a traditional fixed telephone line to place an emergency call. It is in these situations that the 911 system shines because it is designed to handle such calls. As a result, databases provide public-safety answering points, or PSAPs, with an accurate, automatic location for the emergency caller.

But the proliferation of cell phones in the United States has made fixed telephony calls to PSAPs more the exception than the rule. A few years ago, the majority of 911 calls began coming from cellular callers; today, many PSAPs field 70% or more of their emergency calls from the cellular system.

For public-safety agencies, the problem is that getting an accurate location of a 911 caller using a cellular phone is much more difficult than with fixed telephony. Public-safety officials often have expressed frustration with the location information from cellular calls because inaccuracies can result in valuable time being lost trying to search for an incident. In addition, more resources often have to be deployed to an area in hopes that one of them will find the incident.

“Responders are told what kind of call it is,” said Roger Hixson, technical issues director for the National Emergency Number Association (NENA). “If it's wireless, it certainly makes a difference, in many cases.”

In early 2007, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials released the results of its Project LOCATE study, which revealed seven PSAPs in the U.S. that received wireless location data with accuracy results far below the thresholds set by the FCC.

However, none of the wireless carriers actually had violated the FCC's rules, which at the time allowed them to average 911 calls from large regional areas. The commission passed rules last fall calling for carriers to meet the accuracy thresholds within each given PSAP territory. Those rules were overturned by a federal court on procedural grounds, but the court also suggested that substantive issues might exist. That led key wireless and public-safety players to agree that location accuracy should be measured on a county level.

Ted Morgan, CEO of Skyhook Wireless, a provider of location-based services, said county-level testing would be a big improvement over the previous rules, which allowed carriers to comply with the FCC's location accuracy mandate because excellent location accuracy in some areas offset poor location accuracy in other areas.

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