September 20, 2001
(Computerworld)
AT&T Wireless now says it can meet the Federal Communications Commission's E911 automatic location-identification requirements, reversing a position it took when it sought a waiver in April from the Oct. 1 deadline by which carriers must offer the service.
Emergency crews searching for victims at the site of the World Trade Center terrorist attack in New York have been using jury-rigged location systems to try to locate cell phones and potentially their owners, providing real-world impetus to the cell phone industry to meet the FCC's E911 location deadlines, analysts said.
AT&T Wireless, in Redmond Wash., told the FCC in a Sept. 17 letter that it has decided to use a network-based position-location system and to start fielding it on the portion of its network that runs on Time Divisions Multiple Access (TDMA) protocols. In April, AT&T Wireless had said it planned to use a hybrid network and handset-based system for both its TDMA and Global System for Mobile networks.
The Sept. 17 letter to the FCC was released by the commission this week.
Steve Crosby, a spokesman for AT&T Wireless, said that while the company had been working on development of a location system that would provide enhanced accuracy, the company could not meet the FCC's deadline. Instead of pushing its own system, AT&T Wireless decided it would be better to come as close as possible to meeting the deadline after all, he said.
Network-based systems use sophisticated triangulation from cell towers to locate a cell phone, while handset systems use Global Positioning System receiver chips embedded in handsets backed up by central processing systems to help locate handsets used inside buildings, in urban canyons or under tree cover.
The FCC requires cellular carriers offering network-based E911 automatic location services to be accurate to within 100 meters for 67% of all calls; for handset-based systems, the service must be even more accurate, to 50 meters for 67% of all calls.
In its latest filing with the FCC, AT&T Wireless said it plans to use network-based location systems provided by either TruePosition Inc. in King of Prussia, Pa., or Forest, Va.-based Grayson Wireless, a division of Allen Telecom Inc. in Beechwood, Ohio. Earlier this month, TruePosition signed a deal with Cingular Wireless of Atlanta, to serve as its systemwide location provider.
Michael Amarosa, a spokesman for TruePosition who once served as deputy commissioner for communications for the New York City Police Department, said his company worked with Verizon Wireless last week to deploy a jury-rigged version of its position-locating system in lower Manhattan. That makeshift operation, which included "hanging antennas out of broken windows" of buildings near the Trade Center rubble, was aimed at finding cell phones of victims buried in the collapse of the twin towers.
Amarosa said the ad hoc system, which he described as a rough version of the system TruePosition will install nationwide in the Cingular Wireless network, managed to track down 1,600 cell phones in or near the rubble pile, with an accuracy of within 100 meters.
That information, which included the positions of phones used by emergency workers, was turned over to emergency coordinators at the scene, Amarosa said.
The use of location technology in the worst terrorist attack in the country's history should provide impetus for major cell carriers to stop seeking waivers from the FCC, analysts said.
Alan Reiter, an analyst at Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing in Chevy Chase, Md., said he found it "not coincidental" that AT&T Wireless reversed course on the FCC's location mandate just after the terrorist attacks.
Craig Mathias, an analyst at Farpoint Group in Ashland, Mass., said that while only AT&T Wireless and Atlanta-based Cingular Wireless have said they can meet the FCC's requirements, he has no doubts "all the other carriers could do it, but it's a question of dollars and cost recovery."
Mathias said he believes carriers would recover their costs by raising user charges.
Related stories: