[82505] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Pete Templin)
Wed Jul 20 10:43:08 2005
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:42:42 -0500
From: Pete Templin <petelists@templin.org>
To: Andre Oppermann <nanog-list@nrg4u.com>
Cc: NANOG <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <42DE289B.9090409@nrg4u.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Andre Oppermann wrote:
> I have never seen any real study by the emergency response services
> on how many problems they actually have other than isolated worst-
> cases and a lot of political rah-rah. In the end I expect that any
> technically feasible improvement to the cell phone position accuracy
> is miniscule to the actual effort and expenditures it requires.
(putting on my firefighting helmet for a moment)
I don't have any studies, per se, but we get enough "the house next to
XXXXX Any Street" calls as it is that the "technically feasible
improvement" is an improvement.
In San Antonio, people "give directions" by intersections, and leave it
up to the recipient to actually figure out where the destination is.
"281 and Bitters" represents a ~10 square mile area to most locals, and
similar scenarios pop up all over. I-10 runs "east and west" from El
Paso to Houston through downtown. I-35 runs "north and south" from
Dallas to Laredo. Loop 410 is a 54-mile loop around the city. Loop
1604 is a 110-mile loop around the city. Getting cell phone calls from
a tourist (of which we have plenty) reporting a wreck at I-10&410
narrows it down, but still leaves ~27 miles of inaccuracy. Add in 4-8
exit ramps, 10 square miles of surrounding area, and a language barrier,
and you end up with some combination of delayed response, parallel
response to each possibility, and increased risk to rescuers and
innocent citizens.
So yeah, I'd like better locations whenever possible.
pt
