Company Has Solution For Tracking 911 Cell Calls
January 24, 2010
By Sadie Hughes, CBS4 Denver
DENVER – Cell phones can help people stay in touch, but when it comes to making 911 calls there is a disconnect.
“In the old way of doing business with a telephone landline we knew exactly where you were every day. When you called 911 that information displayed on a screen,” said Carl Simpson, Denver 911 Executive Director.
Cell phones on the other hand do not show exactly where a person is located when a 911 call comes in. Thus, if someone does not know their location, it’s more difficult for emergency responders to find them.
“Cellular technology will give us the closest cellular site, but the way cell technology works, if that cell tower is full, the call is automatically bumped to the next cell tower,” Simpson said.
That means a person’s location could register quite a distance from where they truly are located. The GPS technology currently used could show a cell tower that is up to three football fields away from their actual location.
WirelessWERX, a company out of Anaheim, Calif., said they have found a solution. The Denver 911 Dispatch Center is currently testing the technology in a Denver University apartment complex, The University Lofts. The program called SiteWERX can detect a person’s exact location within a building when a 911 call is placed. It can even track a person’s movements as long as the phone call is connected. It will tell a 911 dispatcher what building the person is in, what floor they’re on, and even the exact room number.
In an area like a garage or an elevator where a 911 call would possibly not go through, the SiteWERX network can start to track a person before a traditional 911 call is completed if the number is dialed on the phone.
SiteWERX operates through the use of node technology. If the phone has Bluetooth technology and there is a node installed nearby, dispatchers will be able to track the location. The nodes, small white boxes, are installed in a building to make 911 calls easily traceable. SiteWERX sends a signal to the Internet and then back to the dispatcher. The number of nodes needed depends upon the building’s square footage.
“The MSRP cost of the node is $80, but purchased in volumes to cover a large building can be much lower. The nodes cover roughly 1,000 square feet. If you want to work out a basic cost, multiply your building square feet by this $80 number and then add in 10 percent to 15 percent installation costs,” WirelessWERX CEO Steve Artim said.
“It will quickly help us figure out where you are and when you’re not able to tell us yourself,” 911 operator Carl Woehrle said.
There is a strong need for Denver dispatchers to be able to track Denver cell phone users who make about 560,000 calls to 911 each year.
“Last month we were at 63 percent of our 911 calls were cellular based,” Simpson said.
WirelessWERX said there is a strong possibility the technology will be quite successful everywhere.
“We have run hundreds of test cases on the Denver Lofts installation and have gotten 97 percent accuracy on call placement within 10 meters and 100 percent accuracy on the exact floor level of the call,” Artim said.
Woehrle said that he thinks the new technology is promising.
“Once they work out the bugs in it and it works consistently on a wide-spread basis, it will really be a great tool,” Woehrle said.
Artim said the need for SiteWERX technology is growing, especially in college campuses.
“My kids are going to college next year. I have my first senior going. I’m talking to the university to say, ‘Hey, we really need to do this because universities have also cut the cord nationally.’ They’ve yanked out all the landlines in their dorms. You can’t even find a landline on a university campus. They’re 15-to-20 story freshman dorms and they’ve got one landline in the basement,” Artim said.
View this story at KCNC CBS4 Denver.