FCC Aims to Help First Responders Better Locate Wireless 911 Callers

The Federal Communications Commission proposed improvements to its wireless 911 location accuracy rules, which reduce emergency response times and ultimately save lives by enabling 911 call centers and first responders to quickly identify the location of people who call 911 from wireless phones. In a Sixth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC is proposing measures to address concerns  about precision while balancing the needs of industry and promoting technical flexibility and innovation, including seeking comment on:

• Requiring wireless providers to deliver vertical location information to 911 call centers measured in Height Above Ground Level, instead of Height Above Ellipsoid, to provide more actionable information to first responders.
• Requiring that the industry test bed validate the performance of vertical location technologies in dense urban, urban, suburban, and rural environments rather than the current approach that allows aggregating or averaging performance across environments.
• Providing non-nationwide wireless providers and certain major public safety organizations expanded access to test bed data, and allowing these public safety organizations to challenge test bed validations. • Ways to increase the number of wireless 911 calls that convey dispatchable location information with the call.
• Improving horizontal location accuracy for wireless 911 calls and location accuracy for text-to-911.