‘911’ Location Accuracy: Getting Dispatchable Addresses

TruePosition recently commissioned and produced a test report purporting to show that its proprietary technology can meet the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed benchmarks for locating wireless 911 callers horizontally and vertically indoors.

The tests were run on a test bed in Wilmington, Delaware outside the context of the established CSRIC process specifically designed to assess new “911” location technologies.

And although TruePosition claims the test relied on commercial off-the-shelf technologies, it did not and the technologies used by TruePosition are not fully supported in any wireless network today. Moreover, the technology used would not provide complete location information in that it does not have the capability to provide a vertical estimate of location.

Beyond these significant limitations, the testing highlights even bigger concerns. The fact is that the approach proposed by TruePosition is, at the core, antithetical to the design of modern 3G and 4G networks.

TruePosition’s proposed solution depends on hardware installed at each base station seeing the handsets being served by other base stations. They also ignore the potential for the untenable interference that such an approach would likely create.

[Marsh serves as the AT&T Vice President of Federal Regulatory]