Wireless telephone providers are claiming that complying with a recent Federal Communications Commission ruling regarding 911 calls from cell phones is technologically impossible.
The FCC ruled this week changing the restrictions regarding how accurate mobile phone companies have to be when determining the location of an individual who is using a cell phone to make a 911 call.
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Wireless carriers must be able to identify a caller’s location within 150 or 300 yards 95 percent of the time by 2012, according to the ruling. The ruling sets out specific benchmarks the companies would have to meet each year in order to be compliant. But Reston-based Sprint Nextel spokesman John Taylor said there is no technology out there that would improve accuracy to the degree the FCC is requiring.
“There are geographic challenges and unique equipment challenges,” Taylor said. “There’s not a cookie-cutter solution for implementing this technology.”
Taylor said Sprint already has been making significant investments in improving the current system, though he could not quantify them in dollars. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin argued in a statement that the measures are feasible and just would require additional financial investment by the mobile companies.
“There are concrete measures that carriers can be taking now to improve location,” Martin said.
Taylor said that while Washington-area residents have a charge put on their cell phone bills that goes to public safety outfits for technology upgrades, such a system is not in place in many other states, so local emergency responders do not have the funding for additional improvements. Joe Farren, spokesman for CTIA, the D.C.-based wireless trade association, said his organization had recommended that a group of industry and public safety be formed to develop a realistic plan for improving reliability, but the FCC rejected the idea.
“I don’t know who we’re helping with this,” Farren said. “No one’s more committed to E-911 than we are, but we need something realistic.”
Farren said he hopes the FCC will revisit the decision, but the group is considering taking the ruling to court it doesn’t.
