PSAP survey reflects dire need for indoor-location accuracy improvements
In the survey, there was only one open-ended question, but it elicited more than 200 responses, Barnett said.
“We decided to have one open-ended question: Tell us a little bit about the problems that your PSAP has been having locating people on wireless 911 calls?,” Barnett said. “That was the thing that was so amazing, beyond the statistics, which was these stories.
“You can kind of sense the frustration.”
In terms of indoor-location technologies, Barnett said he believes technology exists to provide XY coordinates that are accurate within 50 meters 67% of the time—the standard that carriers would have to meet within two years, under the FCC proposal.
“I don’t think 50 meters is the end all, but it’s such a great improvement over what we have right now,” Barnett said. “I don’t know how long it will take, but I do think it will get much better than that. If we could make sure that some of the other solutions—the Wi-Fi and distributed-antenna solutions—are worked into the system as well, then you’re really going to start getting apartment-level accuracy at some time.
“One of the things I would caution against is that there are some who would say, ‘Well, let’s wait on that.’ But we’re talking about 168 million calls per year that may not have a good location for them. We can’t wait. When you read those anecdotes [in the survey], you realize that people will die today, because they couldn’t be found—even though the technology exists to find them.
“Public-safety people and first responders would love to have 50 meters [accuracy range on indoor wireless calls] right now, because they don’t have anything right now.”