More than two-thirds of the nation’s population now resides in areas where wireless 911 includes delivery of the caller’s call back number and location to the appropriate public safety answering point, according to the National Emergency Number Association. While this landmark percentage was reached in recent weeks, there are still large areas of the country (57.3% of counties) not yet providing this important service to wireless customers.

“The 911 community and wireless industry can be proud of reaching this benchmark,” stated NENA President David Jones, ENP. ”However, much work still needs to be done to provide this life-saving service in the significantly high number of counties, predominately rural, where it is still not available. The public needs and deserves wireless E911, regardless of where they live or where they may visit or travel through. It remains critical that Congress provide funding to implement the Enhance 911 Act grant program.”

The need for precise wireless E911 location information has been demonstrated in recent weeks resulting in lives saved where the technology exists. Only a month after implementing an E911 system, on Dec. 12 in Brown County, Wis., an injured snowmobiler was saved after making a wireless 9-1-1 call. The caller did not know exactly where he was, but the 911 telecommunicator did thanks to the Phase II E911 system. Emergency responders were able to quickly find him and get him the help that he needed. A day after Brown County's E911 system helped locate the injured snowmobiler, the Calumet County, Wisconsin Sheriff's Department says it was also able to save a life thanks to its new E911 system. A 13-year-old girl used a cell phone to call for help saying that her mom was having a seizure. She could only tell the 911 telecommunicator that she was somewhere between Chilton and Neenah but with the precise location provided by the E911 system, emergency responders were able to find the girl and her mother.

NENA published current wireless E911 statistics earlier this month measuring the number of counties, individual Pubic Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) and total population covered by Phase I and Phase II wireless location technology. Phase I includes delivery of the caller’s phone number and the cell site being used for the 911 call. Phase II includes delivery of the caller’s location and the caller’s phone number.

Nearly 70% of counties contain PSAPs receiving Phase I data while 42.7% of counties have PSAPs accepting Phase II calls. The percentages for individual PSAPs are slightly improved from previous statistics with 79.3% receiving Phase I calls and 53.9% Phase II capable. The PSAP statistics translate to 84.5 percent of the US population covered by Phase I and 66.7% covered by Phase II enabled PSAPs. As the numbers suggest, the greater population covered than PSAPs with Phase I and II technology in place, particularly for Phase II, indicates that more deployments are occurring in high-density population areas and that rural areas continue to struggle to upgrade their E911 capabilities. These statistics, part of an ongoing wireless deployment project sponsored by the US Department of Transportation, are available on the NENA Web site at www.nena.org/911_facts/911fastfacts.htm. More detailed county by county statistics can be found on the wireless deployment section of the NENA Web site at http://nena.ddti.net/.