4 ms·

The accuracy requirements for e911 are quite low and are given in terms of a target average. From Wikipedia: > Wireless network operators must provide the lati

The accuracy requirements for e911 are quite low and are given in terms of a target average. From Wikipedia: > Wireless network operators must provide the latitude and longitude of callers within 300 meters, within six minutes of a request by a PSAP. Accuracy rates must meet FCC standards on average within any given participating PSAP service area by September 11, 2012 As such the location provided by a barely-compliant mobile phone provider would only have a 50% chance (depending on distribution and what average means exactly in this context) of being within 300 meters of the actual location of the call. I don't know what the real world numbers look like, but it seems very reasonable that the emergency service personnel would need much more accurate location information than that in order to respond without a lot of searching.

reaperducer 8y ago
Where I live, if you call 311 after 5pm you get routed to the 911 operator. I called 311 at 2am once, and had to give the address to the 911 operator because she had no data at all. This was from an AT&T phone, so it's a miracle I got through at all. (AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are all 1-bar for the 50,000 people near where I live, and they constantly complain about it on the neighborhood web sites. Only Sprint has a good signal, and that's because of old Nextel gub'mint contract towers.)
dogma1138 8y ago
Things have changed a lot since then back then GPS was still not available in each handset and not every provider used GSM with LTE these services have evolved further: https://cdn.rohde-schwarz.com/pws/dl_downloads/dl_application/application_notes/1sp05/1SP05_1e_LTE_location-based-services.pdf https://cdn.rohde-schwarz.com/pws/dl_downloads/dl_applicatio... Emergency services would have your GPS coordinates these days, or at least could as its integrated into the spec.

reaperducer 8y ago

Where I live, if you call 311 after 5pm you get routed to the 911 operator. I called 311 at 2am once, and had to give the address to the 911 operator because she had no data at all. This was from an AT&T phone, so it's a miracle I got through at all. (AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are all 1-bar for the 50,000 people near where I live, and they constantly complain about it on the neighborhood web sites. Only Sprint has a good signal, and that's because of old Nextel gub'mint contract towers.)

dogma1138 8y ago

Things have changed a lot since then back then GPS was still not available in each handset and not every provider used GSM with LTE these services have evolved further: https://cdn.rohde-schwarz.com/pws/dl_downloads/dl_application/application_notes/1sp05/1SP05_1e_LTE_location-based-services.pdf https://cdn.rohde-schwarz.com/pws/dl_downloads/dl_applicatio... Emergency services would have your GPS coordinates these days, or at least could as its integrated into the spec.