NENA officials clarify terms of wireless 911 location deal with carriers
Today, carriers are required to provide location information that is within 50 meters of the actual location for 67% of outdoor wireless 911 calls made in the carrier’s testbed or within 150 meters of the actual location for 95% of outdoor wireless 911 calls made in the carrier’s testbed, Fontes said. There are no requirements for indoor wireless calls to 911, which the FCC has expressed a desire to change throughout the past year.
As mentioned previously, it is estimated that about 30% of all wireless 911 calls are made from outdoor locations. With this in mind, four key benchmarks of the deal call for the four wireless carriers to provide “a location fix using heightened location-accuracy technologies” for wireless 911 calls based on the following timetables:
- 40% of all wireless 9-1-1 calls within two years;
- 50% of all wireless 9-1-1 calls within three years;
- 75% of all voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) wireless 9-1-1 calls within five years; and
- 80% of all VoLTE wireless 9-1-1 calls within six years.
Of course, one key to getting the most accurate location data from the wireless-infrastructure assets is to ensure that the location information associated with each wireless asset is accurate. With this in mind, carrier-based assets like personal femto cells must be reregistered with the correct address before they can be operated after being moved to a new geographic location, Forgety said.
As for complaints from other public-safety organizations that they were not included in 911-location talks with carriers until late in negotiations, Fontes said that all organizations were invited to provide input when negotiations reached a point that indicated that a deal could occur.