WirelessWERX Launches SiteWERX
By Anil Sharma, TMCnet Contributor
September 22, 2009
WirelessWERX , offering wireless indoor location services (ILS), has launched SiteWERX, which the company claims is the industry’s most precise indoor location technology for the mobile 911 caller.
In a release, company officials said that SiteWERX can locate a mobile 911 caller down to the building, floor and room.
“A 911 dispatcher’s greatest fear is not getting help to a victim quickly enough,” said Carl Simpson, executive director of Denver 911, the first Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) in the country to deploy SiteWERX, in the release.
Simpson said that SiteWERX helps Denver 911 do its job better when locating people who call 911 from inside a building using mobile phones.
“Bottom line: we’re able to help people by getting first responders there faster,” he added.
Steve Artim, CEO of WirelessWERX, said that today, more than 50 percent of 911 calls are made on mobile phones and half of those are made indoors. The 911 system was created more than 40 years ago to address the landline environment.
Artim said that with more and more people relying only on their mobile phones, a 911 call location accuracy becomes a top concern for public safety and security personnel.
“WirelessWERX is powering the emergency system with the industry’s most accurate indoor location. And this precise location information can be the difference in a life or death situation,” he added.
Whether the caller is in the basement or on the seventh floor, SiteWERX pins down a mobile phone caller’s location to within 10 meters (about 30 feet) and includes building, floor and room number.
Company officials said that SiteWERX is deployed as an in-building wireless node network. These location nodes are installed in a room or hallway. A Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone runs SiteWERX’s application, which sits dormant until a caller dials 911.
The location node network software manages the nodes and sends location information to a 911 communication center. When a wireless 911 call is made, the caller’s building, floor and room location is automatically sent to the responder.
Anil Sharma is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anil’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Patrick Barnard