When a neighbor saw flames climbing the walls of the small house in Maryland, she grabbed her cell phone and dialed 911. The call, however, landed with a dispatcher in Washington, D.C., who couldn't find the address of the fire because it wasn't in the dispatcher's jurisdiction. The caller, frantic, talked with the dispatcher for several minutes as the blaze grew.

In the end, the February 2003 fire killed a woman and her two children.

Had the caller used a traditional wireline telephone, the call would have gone to a local dispatcher, who would have known the caller's precise location. Most areas of the country are now served by enhanced 911 service, which displays the addresses of wireline calls on dispatchers' screens.

Technology allows for similar capabilities for wireless telephones, but only about 18% of call centers nationwide have this capability, according to the Federal Communications Commission. This is a problem as about one-third of all 911 calls nationally are placed on cellular phones, the FCC estimates. That number can balloon to half or even more of all 911 calls in individual regions.

One step forward

The advent of enhanced 911 services for wireline phones represents a huge leap forward for fire departments, but the failure to implement the technology for wireless is swiftly reversing that progress.

Tourists who witness house fires or automobile accidents aren't able to tell dispatchers where to go. People in trouble who don't know their location are taking longer to find — if they're discovered at all. Heart-attack victims or people involved in violent incidents who dial 911 but can't speak aren't getting the emergency service they require.

But the road to full adoption of wireless E-911 service has not been smooth, and a host of challenges lie ahead. Adopting wireless E-911 is critical to fulfilling the mission of fire departments, says Rick Galway, retired chief of communications for the Toronto (Ontario) Fire Department. “The whole idea for us is to have every call answered from every device, every hour of the day,” with location information, he says.

While most wireline telephones are yoked to systems that display location identification, wireline 911 calls are not the way of the future. As more citizens sign up for cellular service — about 150 million Americans now subscribe to a mobile service — the piece of the 911 pie taken up by wireless phones continually rises. In 2001, according to the Government Accounting Office's report, Uneven Implementation of Wireless Enhanced 911 Raises Prospect of Piecemeal Availability for Years to Come, Americans placed about 57 million emergency calls to 911 using wireless phones.

In addition, people increasingly are getting rid of wireline phone service altogether and switching to wireless devices for all of their phone service. In November, consumers were able for the first time to keep their wireline phone numbers when switching to wireless service, a capability that is expected to speed up the replacement of wireline home phones with portable mobile phones. As a result, wireline telephones are growing more obsolete every day, and so is the old wireline 911 system.

In Charlottesville, Va., at least two people must work on dispatch at all times because of the flood of new calls they are getting from cellular callers, says Chief Julian Taliaferro.

“You get so many calls sometimes,” he says. “The number for a single incident is overwhelming, particularly on the Interstate system. You have a large fire and you have all of these people calling.”

Taliaferro's department does not yet have E-911, but he said that the city has committed to it and the technology is “on the way soon.”

However, Charlottesville's dispatchers, like most dispatchers around the country, for now must contend with an avalanche of new wireless emergency calls that come, literally, from the ether. Most often, dispatchers have no idea from where the caller is using the phone.

Legislative attention

Federal, state and local governments, and wireless phone companies are working together to ensure that the number of areas with wireless E-911 service increases rapidly. But regulators and lawmakers in Washington have been concerned about the issue since at least the late 1990s.

In 1999, Congress passed the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act, which designated 911 as the universal emergency number and urged the various parties involved with wireless 911 to implement E-911 services. Lawmakers acted again in November 2003 when the House of Representatives passed the E-9-1-1 Implementation Act, which authorized federal matching grants to state, local and tribal governments for upgrades of 911 equipment, infrastructure and personnel training at designated public safety answering points. States would not be eligible to receive the grants if they are misusing the revenues from existing telephone bill surcharges that are designated for 911 improvements. The bill also would establish a federal 911 office to ensure better coordination among federal, state and local public safety officials. The bill awaits Senate action.

The federal government alone, however, can't establish E-911. Full implementation also requires action by wireless companies, wireline companies, and state and local governments.

“In short, three parties — the wireless carriers, local exchange carriers, and PSAPs — must interconnect and install equipment in order for wireless E911 calls to be completed and the caller location information to be sent with the call,” the GAO report said. “However, no single entity has regulatory authority and oversight over the entire implementation process.”

Federal regulators, through the FCC, have substantial authority over telecommunications, and they have acted to prod the implementation of E-911 among wireless carriers. The FCC has set deadlines for wireless companies to make their systems E-911 capable, and it has taken enforcement actions against carriers that failed to meet interim deadlines.

State public utility commissions have authority over wireline carriers. But the more than 6,000 PSAPs in the country, which serve as the nerve center of the complicated network that connects cellular callers first to wireline phone companies and then to wireline emergency dispatchers, remain outside of the jurisdiction of any federal or state regulatory body. Authority over the PSAPs varies from state to state and locality to locality.

Regardless of how much money wireless and wireline companies spend to upgrade their systems for E-911, none of it will translate into a working wireless E-911 system if the PSAPs don't install the equipment they need to receive and interpret the location data.

New equipment and extensive training costs money, and a lack of state and local funding for upgrading PSAPs was identified by the GAO study as “the largest factor affecting the progress of wireless E-911.”

Fire departments that are eager for wireless E-911 should get involved, says Roger Hixson, technical issues director for the National Emergency Number Association.

“They should support legislation to generate funding,” he says. “They also need to support the actual planning and implementation work to get the new equipment in and tested. There's legislation and political activity, planning, and project management that needs to come from departments.”

Technical difficulties

Transforming a communications network into something that determines the locations of both wireline and wireless callers involves two phases of development.

Nationwide, Phase I development is roughly 65% complete. In this first phase of wireless E-911 modernization, dispatchers receive the phone numbers of the cellular phones calling 911 and the cellular towers that broadcast the calls. While important and helpful, Phase I upgrades don't show dispatchers the exact locations of callers. Instead, they offer general, broad areas from where calls are made.

Phase II provides much more precise longitudinal and latitudinal information about callers. While it doesn't always offer a specific address, it usually offers enough information for emergency dispatchers to find the caller. It's also much more complicated. Before locations are revealed, the geographic coordinates of the callers first need to be determined, and then that raw data must be translated into a form that dispatchers can understand.

There have been two approaches to implementing Phase II upgrades. Both of these locator technologies involve a process called triangulation, which involves using antennae on towers as points of reference to determine a caller's location.

In one approach, called the handset-based solution, the telephone figures out its own location by triangulation. This solution depends on phones that have built-in GPS capability. The FCC requires that for all carriers using handset-based solutions, the locations of callers must be pinpointed to within 50 meters at least 67% of the time, and within 150 meters 95% of the time. Verizon Wireless, Sprint PCS, Nextel and Alltel have chosen handset solutions.

The other approach, called the network-based solution, uses base stations in the carrier's network to determine a caller's location. The technology involves the bouncing of signals between the phone and towers. Time taken for signals to travel between phones and towers is translated into distances, which eventually determines geographic locations. In this approach, the network finds the phone. AT&T Wireless, Cingular and T-Mobile have chosen a network solution.

Both approaches pose financial and personnel challenges. The GAO study estimates that it will cost states at least $8 billion during the next five years to complete wireless E-911 implementation nationwide. The technologies are extremely complex, and training for dispatchers is extensive. The PSAP dispatcher often is the first person to discover a malfunctioning technology, and needs significant training to understand the technology and adapt if problems arise.

According to the GAO study, PSAP administrators traditionally have focused “on public safety and emergency response, not telecommunications. The complexity of implementing wireless E-911, however, has forced PSAP administrators to become telecommunications project managers and to learn about the technology involved.”

Departmental action

The choice of approaches to location identification is not especially important, but it's vital for fire chiefs and departments to find out where their PSAPs and wireless carriers are in the implementation process.

The U.S. Department of Transportation and NENA have worked together to build a database on PSAP readiness for wireless E-911 service. The database, publicly available at www.nena.org (click on “Wireless Deployment Profile and Maps”), can be a useful tool for fire chiefs interested in pushing for wireless E-911 service, but who are unsure as to the readiness of their PSAP for the service.

Some places are more aggressive than others about getting wireless E-911 service. In Indiana, the state created a Web site that provides county-by-county and carrier-by-carrier information of all E-911 deployments in the state. The site, said Indiana State Treasurer Tim Berry in testimony before a House subcommittee in September, has “generated consumer demand and knowledge on available E-911 services in Indiana. Consumers now have the E-911 choice and information in purchasing wireless services. It's making a difference in our state deployments.”

Active involvement by fire chiefs and departments at state and local levels can make a difference. Implementing wireless E-911 is technologically challenging and expensive, and without pressure from the front lines, cash-strapped states in many cases are reluctant to spend the capital and hours required for establishing the system.

Some states have imposed user fees, attached to telephone bills, to help pay for E-911. But these monies haven't always gone toward upgrading PSAP facilities for enhanced wireless services. In California, $53 million collected from cellphone users to pay for E-911 has been spent on other programs. The number is $9 million in Oregon and $5 million in North Carolina. In New York, where users pay $1.20 a month in surcharges for E-911 — the highest rate in the nation — none of the money has been spent on E-911.

Outside of citizens, it's fire departments and other first responders who most directly feel the unfortunate effects of failed wireless E-911 implementations. Fire departments' vigorous commitment to the importance of enhanced 911 is extremely valuable, and potent, in public policy debates.

Thanks to the spread of wireless phones, fire departments and other first responders communicate much more frequently than ever before with ordinary citizens. People driving to work, hiking in the woods, shopping at the mall or waiting in an airport are the eyes and ears of first responders, and their calls are becoming increasingly central to emergency work.

But these vital emergency tools will not live up to their potential until E-911 is implemented across the nation. Location information saves lives, and the heart of the technology — revealing to public safety professionals the locations of people in trouble — is at the core of fire department missions everywhere.

“When people call us and they need help, it's our job to find them as quickly as possible,” says Taliaferro. “Enhanced wireless let's us do that, and that's a big deal. We're getting it soon in Charlottesville, and I can't wait.”

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Doug Brown is a correspondent based in Washington, D.C.