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The E911 Headache

Implementing Automatic Location Identification technology is proving more difficult than first thought.

In 1994, the FCC gave cellular operators five years to provide mobile location service to locate callers dialing 911 from a cell phone.

Nearly a decade -- and numerous mandates, deadlines and disputes -- later, public safety operators in most areas still can't locate callers dialing 911 from a cell phone. There is plenty of blame to go around, depending on who you talk to, but those working to make E911 materialize would rather acknowledge the positives of the last year before taking a deep breath and delving into problems of the E911 rollout.

"There's been significant progress," said Norman Forshee, E911 Director of the National Emergency Number Association, noting that large numbers of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) across the country have complied with phase two of the FCC's mandate -- which was supposed to have been met in two phases by fall of 2001.

Phase I of the FCC's plan required PSAPs to identify wireless callers by phone number and location of the cell tower transmitting the call, which would give the PSAP a general location of the caller.

Phase II was the implementation of automatic location identification (ALI) technology, which transmits location data from the caller to the PSAP via handset-based GPS or network-based system. At least part of the problem in getting to Phase II has been the initial debates about which technology was best.

"There are strong opinions over which of the two technologies is the best to employ in a certain area," said Forshee, adding that technology is just one of many issues E911 participants have battled. "We had to fight a lot of fights before people accepted this was going to happen. Now we're going pretty good."

In making that assessment, Forshee acknowledges tempered expectations as to how soon all involved parties will bring E911 capability to all cellular phone users. "I think wireless is not happening slowly compared to wire line," he said.


Progress
Bill Cade, director of 911 Services and Operations for the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO), said about 1,000 of 7,000 PSAPs are now Phase II compliant, and a good many of those have accomplished the feat within the last 12 months.

In his remarks at APCO's 69th Annual Conference in August, FCC Chairman Michael Powell noted some recent successes. "For the six nationwide carriers, more than 65 percent of the markets in which they've deployed have come on board in the last six months," he said.

Powell also said every nationwide carrier using a handset-based approach is offering at least one compliant handset. Sprint and Verizon offer their customers at least 10, and Sprint has sold more than 11.6 million compliant phones.

"It's not as easy as everybody wants to think it is," Cade said. "I'm not sure everybody understands how complicated this really is."


Obstacles
What's making the process slow and arduous, Cade said, is the usual litany of issues. The simplistic response to why it's taken so long would be the technology's complexity and issues surrounding cost recovery.

"I'm reluctant to define blame, because I'm not sure there wasn't just a lot of confusion in the beginning," Cade said.

Forshee said he agrees -- sort of.

"I use another word, but confusion will do," he said. "I think some players were attempting to avoid it altogether."

Some carriers initially balked at the FCC's Phase II requirements, calling them "unachievable" because of shortcomings with the technology. Some carriers missed FCC deadlines for implementing Phase II requirements because they were not satisfied with the technology and switched to different technologies midstream.

"The bottom line is that back in the mid '90s, there were a number of different vendors promising great things," said Brian Fontes, vice president of Governmental Affairs for Cingular Wireless. "But when push came to shove, it really boiled down to a few location vendors that could meet FCC requirements."

AT&T Wireless, Cingular and T-Mobile originally went with a technology called enhanced observed time difference (EOTD), which uses as many as four cellular base stations to pinpoint a cell phone's location by measuring the call's arrival times at various cellular antennas.

It worked well in cities where antennas were abundant, but not in rural areas where antennas are often far apart. AT&T and Cingular halted rollout of the technology, but it took considerably longer for T-Mobile -- which got a waiver from the FCC in implementing Phase II -- to come to the same conclusion.

Forshee said some smaller carriers are still trying to get waivers from the FCC on Phase II rollout.

"They say the technology doesn't work in rural areas and is too costly," he said. "Well, I have a lot of rural area in my county, and it's working pretty good." Forshee lives in St. Clair County, Ill., one of the first to implement ALI technology.


Money Snag
There is also the question of who's responsible for the costs to update the ALI databases -- specifically the E2 interface technology that keeps databases current: Is it the PSAPs? The carriers?

In compliance with Phase II requirements, the E2 interface plays a critical part in locating a caller using a mobile phone to dial 911. When a PSAP operator receives a 911 call from a wireless device, the operator relies on an ALI database to identify the caller's location. In turn, the ALI database gets its location information from a mobile positioning center (MPC), typically maintained by the wireless carriers. The E2 interface is the bridge between the ALI databases and the MPCs -- it's a software upgrade to the ALI database that gives 911 operators updated, more accurate information on the caller's location, so it can be pinpointed on a GIS map.

The FCC has said the upgrade cost lies with the PSAPs, not the carriers. This amounts to an additional cost that wasn't tallied early in the E911 rollout process.

"A big delay has been 911 local exchange carriers (LECs) trying to get their piece of the cost recovery pie for passing these wireless calls through their network," Forshee said. "And maybe upgrading, to some level, their ability to pass the data and the new ALI formats [E2] that were necessary,"

But he said that issue should have been resolved long ago.

"Here in St. Clair County, we were involved in the first deployment of E2," he said. "It seems to me the LEC [here] knew then that they had a change to make, and they made it. So right then and there, they knew there were charges they were going to have to recover. Why they didn't address it at that point, I don't know."

APCO is trying to establish the impact of the costs incurred by LECs around the country, and how the PSAPs are going to meet those costs. Some PSAPs have delayed E911 rollout because of their uncertainty.

The cost issue now may be the biggest holdup to E911 rollout.

"There are issues about the setup and recurring costs, and we don't see that going away right away," Cade said

In fact, Fontes said Cingular Wireless has noticed a leveling off of E911 requests among public safety agencies.

"There are a lot of reasons for that, but first and foremost it's the funding problems the [agencies] have," he said. "More and more states are raiding these funds. It's unfortunate to say the least."

Cade said he is "optimistic" that APCO grants through its newly established Public Safety Foundation of America are making a difference. The organization awarded $3.1 million in grants for E911 rollout this summer, and is working on another round of grants this fall.

The biggest factor that will see implementation of E911 through to fruition, however, is the realization that implementation is inevitable, according to Forshee.

"Everybody knows it's going to happen," he said. "It's no longer, 'Do we have to do it?' Yes we have to do it, and it's going to happen."