PSAP survey reflects dire need for wireless 911 indoor-location accuracy

Locating wireless 911 callers that are inside a building is a growing issue in the public-safety community, and the FCC should pass rules that require carriers to provide location data within two years, according to a survey of 1,104 public-safety answering point (PSAP) managers and employees.

Released last week, the survey conducted on behalf of the Find Me 911 Coalition revealed that 97% of PSAPs responding indicated that they had received a wireless 911 call within the last year from a caller that could not tell the dispatcher his or her location. Currently, there are no automatic-location standards for 911 calls made from indoor locations, even though 76% of 911 calls come from wireless phones, and 64% of wireless calls to 911 are made inside buildings, according to the survey.

While the FCC has initiated a proceeding on the matter, there has been some debate whether the agency should wait to adopt enforceable rules for carriers. In the survey, 99% of the respondents said they support the FCC proposed indoor-location requirements, while 94% said they opposed waiting an additional three years to implement the rule, which has been proposed by some carriers.

These overwhelming statistics and more than 200 narratives from PSAPs noting the problems associated with the lack of location data for 911 calls indicate that rules are needed as soon as possible, according to Jamie Barnett, counsel to the Find Me 911 Coalition and former chief of the FCC’s public-safety and homeland-security bureau.

“I think this is going to cause some ripples, and I think you’re going to see people referring to this when they file their comments on or before May 12,” Barnett said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “Hopefully, this will help express the 911 community’s significant concern about this problem—they’re tired of having people die on the phone, because they couldn’t find them.”

Just the fact that so many PSAPs responded to the survey is an indication how important the issue of indoor location is to the public-safety community, Barnett said.