Cell Phone 911 Test System

[jfab]

9NEWS.com | Denver | Colorado's Online News Leader | Test system pinpoints emergency callers

 

[dracer777]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Hmm.... Very interesting technology. Although, I do know that dispatch uses cell tower triangulation for 911 cellular calls, can they use GPS coordinates on GPS enabled phones? I know the iPhone and Android have the ability to transmit this information during a 911 call, but does dispatch have the tech to utilize this directly(not having to go through the carrier)? Since most newer phones come with a GPS chip, I would assume it is cheaper than reinventing the wheel.

 

[utlchris]

We use triangulation on the older phones and the cell companies provide us with the XY to dump into our mapping system. On the newer phones that have GPS the info is passed to the tower and then displayed on our screen as XY as well. This all in all is pretty well if you are in an open area and have no clue where you are. However in a city environment it can do fairly well pointing out a parcel/house on the map. But when you get to an apartment complex or something with multiple units close together you can pretty much forget it. I'm skeptical on how this new invention may work. I'm thinking the 911 centers would almost have to have a map layout of the building itself to figure something like this out. I may be wrong as I have no clue on how this new wonder software works but would love to see something like it if it did.