6 ms·

When 911 calls fail

124 points by gr2020 12y ago

sssbc 12y ago
I worked for a cellular location company a decade ago, and the system was mostly used by US cell phone companies to meet the e911 US government requirements. The (entirely reasonable, at least at the time) most telling requirement was 95% of calls needed to be located within X meters (50 IIRC) of the real location. The other 5%? They could be on the moon. Perhaps things have tightened up, but physics prevents it from being 100% (never mind all the system changes always occurring - new towers, new equipment, new staff, ...). End result for those in the know: Use a land line, if you have a choice. If you don't, using a cell phone is still better than shouting in the woods. Another interesting point: most calls were from car wrecks, and these were usually reported multiple times (like ~40 911 calls per wreck from different people - average from metropolitan area). So playing the odds, its a safe system. But there will always be unlucky 911 callers - especially out in the boonies.
jisaacks 12y ago
I am on Sprint, would like to test my 9-1-1 coverage, but unsure how without making a false 9-1-1 call.
- anderiv 12y ago
  In setting up (and verifying) several VoIP E-911 systems and other PSTN phone systems, I've made dozens of "test" calls without issue. When the dispatcher answers, just tell them that you are testing 911 service and that you would like to verify that you got connected to the correct dispatching center. I've never had one of the dispatchers become upset at this - they want your 911 calls to succeed just as much as you do.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - superuser2 12y ago
    Yep. VoIP contractors (I was one) are usually required to call 911 from every location in a PBX system to make sure that the E911 data shows up correctly. There is usually a script for this, and the first words out of your mouth should be "This is a non-emergency call. I am testing <insert short description>. Is this a good time?" It tells the call-taker that they don't need to worry about you, and that you are being careful not to tie up resources. If they need to hang up and focus on priority calls, they will. Most likely, they'll be happy to help.
    - Aloha 12y ago
      You only need to do that if you're stupid frankly, all you need to do is insert dialing rules that if 911 call send the BTN/main number, if for all other calls send station DID - often this is done on the carrier side - so you should only need to place calls from one phone for the whole site. It's wholly impractical to do this as well for any site with more than 20 phones, I had customers with sites that has over 1000 stations on them.
      - superuser2 12y ago
        Sorry, by "location" I meant site, not station. Yes.
        Aloha 12y ago
        That makes more sense, yes :-D - 911 routing issues were always vexing, usually it was a to the wrong PSAP.
        MichaelGG 12y ago
        One of the big players had a lovely-insane policy. They'd use your last MSAG-validated[1] address, regardless what new address you had provisioned. So, user's in Texas, gets an MSAG-validated address, everything's good. They move to Kentucky, change addresses. The new address would have some MSAG issue, and could take days or longer to resolve. This company thought the best thing to do was to route the call to Texas. (MSAG is the street addressing system that the PSAPs use. It can be considerably different from the postal address.)
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    I can understand doing this as part of your job to test a system but isn't it reckless for people to do it just to test their own phones? You're taking up one of a limited number of phones lines for 10-20 seconds, potentially leaving someone in a life threatening situation unable to get through in the only 10-20 seconds they have the opportunity to make the call in.
    - cbhl 12y ago
      If everyone did this at once, it might overwhelm the call center, but in general a E911 call center needs to have far more capacity than there are calls (or otherwise an urgent call might go unanswered). My understanding is the key rules are: 1) wait for an operator and do not hang up (because if you hang up they assume something bad happened and will send police/fire/etc to you), and, 2) tell them that it is a test call so that they can assess whether they can spend time on you or should hang up to answer a more urgent call. I'm sure kids call 911 enough as a prank that your test call won't have a meaningful impact on call volume.
      - click170 12y ago
        In my area there were actually advertisements on the radio asking people to use the lock function on their cellphone to prevent pocket-calls to 911 a few years back. They claimed it had become a problem. It leads me to wonder if your comment about capacity (which I assumed was the case as well) does not apply evenly everywhere.
        cbhl 12y ago
        Well, if you don't tell them it's a test call and you pocket dial, I would hope that the 911 call center would assume that you're being held hostage and send police/fire/etc. to you. So, IMO, that the system isn't meant to handle this type of false alarm isn't reflective of call center capacity but rather fire/police/ambulance capacity (and also annoying everyone involved).
    - VLM 12y ago
      The system is built to tolerate 25 people calling in the same accident on the interstate or 100s of people calling in a plane crash. Last specs I heard around '10 was about a half million calls per day country wide. There are about 25 million small businesses in the country (accurate to only about one sig fig). If you assume a business tests a new phone system once per decade and there are about 10K days in a decade (close enough not to matter) then there will be about 2500 test calls per day out of 500000 total calls or basically its a rounding error. Now on the other hand, don't be a jerk. They're busy at certain times of day and they kinda expect people to make test calls during relatively boring business hours but not during rush hour or at bar close time. Don't be making test calls while a hurricane is hitting the city or while a t-storm is passing thru or a presidential visit or wildfires are kinda nearby, etc. I've done this helping out as part of PBX installs (admittedly a long time ago) and just be calm and clear and polite when verifying the address routing and remember to say "thanks" and its not a big deal.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  I've started two E911 companies. Most answering points are "OK" with you testing if you immediately identify that you're testing and wish to confirm address information. They may put you on hold. In very rare cases, they might insist on dispatching.
nacho_weekend 12y ago
Fascinating, never thought about these implications before for network carriers.
knowaveragejoe 12y ago
Leneweaver attempted to track down Sprint employees about the outage, but couldn't reach anyone at the company. [...] Two weeks later, Leneweaver got in touch with the company. Erm, how is this okay?
- thret 12y ago
  You really shouldn't be allowed to sell a phone - or collect revenue from a phone - that isn't able to call 911.
t-rex1 12y ago
This is just crazy, the FCC keeping quiet is quite unbelievable.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  It's more sensationalist than crazy. The only worthwhile point is that the FCC should get around to looking at the location accuracy requirements for indoor usage. But talking about the article, suppose there is a scheduled maintenance that will affect service, and there's no way around it. What exactly should the telco do? There's not a whole lot they can do. Yeah, it's bad if the service is unavailable, and generally, no one wants that to be the situation. But somehow trynna make it out to some terrible secret is silly.
  - wtracy 12y ago
    Getting a fast busy signal when calling 911 when you have service and can reach normal numbers is a serious problem that needs to be resolved no matter what angle you take. For the other issues, agreed, there's only so much you can reasonably expect.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    If a tower is going to lose its ability to service critical calls, it should not be in charge of phones that could be on nearby towers.
Aloha 12y ago
This is why some states have chosen to go with a single PSAP for the whole state - Cellular E911 has a couple problems, one - the geolocation features of cell phones is best effort, and if it fails, the best the company can do is guess from which site/sector the call is coming in on to route them to the correct PSAP. Two - the cellular networks on whole are best effort, cellular as a technology cannot be as reliable as a wireline hookup, period. In the future, I believe the move to VoLTE will make E911 more reliable, as it will enable more location data to be sent from the handset at the time of call, but until then, the most reliable way to get geolocation data to a PSAP is to use a landline, period, the landline telephone, is and will remain more reliable, consistent and predictable than any of the technologies replacing it. As far as why the carrier couldnt be reached? likely calling the wrong place - Sprint FWIW is and has been in the midst of a forklift network upgrade for a couple years now, its just wrapping up now, but parts of the network have been partially non-functional for hours or days at a time - I know however that regular e911 drive testing is a part of test and turnup, and the planned maintenance process for Sprint.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  FWIW, the landline tends to work because of the amount of manual processes that go into setting up the line in the first place.
  - Aloha 12y ago
    Well, depends on what you mean by manual - most landline phones now can be hooked up without even a frame man having to run jumpers, or for that matter a field service visit, customer enters the provisioning information (service address, billing information, puts a credit card in) and the service is turned up.
- gsnedders 12y ago
  The UK has (essentially) one PSAP for the whole country (it's not actually — there's a number spread across the country for reasons of redundancy, but call allocations are done across the whole network). It has a few interesting results — most notably, when giving a location, they likely know nothing about it. If you say you're in "Central Park, Fakesville", and it's a small park where you can see the whole thing from the entrance, they will still ask you where about in the park you are — because they don't know. People in high-stress situations can end up wasting time trying to describe in gratuitous detail where they are, instead of just giving an answer like, "it's small; they'll see". I'm surprised that the situation wasn't handled better by the phones, though. At least here, if a mobile can contact any tower (regardless of network), an emergency call can be placed through it without charge. I suppose if the emergency line is already stagnated, trying again on a different network would just make it worse. Hmm…
F_J_H 12y ago
Interesting - carriers need to ..track callers to within 50 meters horizontally and 3 meters vertically This poses a problem in dense urban areas with high-rise buildings. The private sector companies mentioned in the article who "zipping ahead" of carriers can provide an altitude using things like wifi tracking, but that still needs to be cross-referenced to an actual floor number. (Keep in mind some buildings don't have a 13th floor, etc.) Barometers in phones don't work well indoors either... So, this may be a case where an FCC regulation is next to impossible to meet, unless someone can figure out how to map altitudes to actual building floor numbers at scale. Seems like that would be pretty labor intensive effort...
- peeters 12y ago
  Where does the FCC regulation say you need to map it to a specific floor? The carrier just has to say where the person is, not how to get to them. They don't have to provide navigation directions to the EMS crew do they? Seems to me like just giving an elevation and coordinates would be compliant.
  - F_J_H 12y ago
    They need to be accurate within 3 meters vertically, and telling a first responder that a call came in from an area say 1000ft above sea level would not be that helpful to him/her when standing in front of a 45 storey building, wondering which floor they should go to. So, it would seem knowing the floor number would be super helpful (though maybe not a regulatory requirement as you say.)
    - gizmo686 12y ago
      Presumably, the first responder could could have an altimeter (or gps) and know their own height.
      - F_J_H 12y ago
        Better, but still not going to be overly helpful. Call came from 1000ft, first responder is standing at 750ft - there are 250ft of floors in between.
MichaelGG 12y ago
I started the first VoIP 9-1-1 service for providers. 9-1-1 and similar emergency response services are a great boon. Something most people just take for granted and figure it just works like magic. The job those people have is mostly thankless and comes with killer stress. (Listening to a few recordings, I'd have a breakdown within a day on that job.) On a more HN-note, I saw an interesting glimpse into how some of the responders view privacy. In context of what to do for VoIP phones, the general feeling at one NENA meeting was "ISPs should provide detailed location information on any access lines to VoIP devices". The implication there is that any software on your computer or network would be able to do a real "geo IP" lookup because your ISP would have to provide your address of record to anything using the connection. No one seemed to realise the massive problem this would create. The other interesting thing is that PSAPs are heading towards an interconnected model. The idea being (at least a few years ago) that PSAPs could all be on the Internet, and transfer calls to each other with SIP + some nutty extensions, bridge in translators, a real utopia. Which sounds nice until you realise so many PSAPs are woefully underfunded and in no position to be running critical infrastructure on the Internet. Hopefully states would step up and provide adequate funding and it could be pulled off as a government project. But it's not so clear, and there's a long way to go. One PSAP told us he didn't want us sending calls from "Internet phones" because his PSAP equipment might get a virus (over his voice line.)
- Fogest 12y ago
  SWAT'ing would be way too easy if there was a really easy VoIP solution to call 911.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    SWAT'ing is trivially performed. Sign up for VoIP service, dial 911. Many systems also have normal phone numbers that go into a 911 center, or to a failover call processing place. Police departments will also let you submit crime reports online. I "swatted" myself by accident after filing a report because one of my license plates was missing. I didn't get any follow up, so I figured I'd just go deal with it later. A bit after that, a cop pulls me over, draws his weapon, aims -- because my car pops up as stolen on his scanner. If someone was to file such a report on someone with concealed carry, I'll be the outcome could be pretty bad.
autism_hurts 12y ago
This may be slightly off-topic, but it's also important. 911 is not there to help you. You need to know how to help yourself. My story - Interstate 880 in the East Bay, Fremont, CA. Not a desolate stretch of highway, not in the middle of nowhere (I mean, Fremont sucks but...) I saw an SUV swerve and then roll in front of me on the highway. Took out 2 other cars as well. Slid on its roof about 50 feet then stopped. Gasoline, debris, and fruit (it was carrying fruit?) strewn about the Freeway. Tons of people pull over. Insanity. The car is still running, and gas is pouring out of the SUV. A bystander and myself get the passengers out. They're unconscious. I recognize the danger of moving them, but the fire danger was very real. Anyway, long story short -- guy goes into shock. Pisses himself, won't respond. 15 people had called 911. Elapsed time? 20 minutes. Still not a single local PD, Firetruck, or CHP officer. The first officer was DRIVING BY on the freeway and didn't know the accident had even happened. Imagine that was your wife, your son, your partner, your family. We had a nurse stop and give care. We also had a contractor who had a box of flares stop and close lanes for us. This was all citizens doing work. Shortly after this incident, I bought a handgun. Because I knew when seconds count, the police/fire/emt are MINUTES away. (I also took medical course)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Animats 12y ago
  "The car is still running, and gas is pouring out of the SUV." ... "I bought a handgun." A fire extinguisher and a first aid kit in your car might be more useful.
  - moggflunkies 12y ago
    You think it's wise to combat a SUV's worth of fuel with a fire extinguisher that fits in your car, on the side of the road? You think that a first aid kit was going to do anything more than what you could do with your bare hands or a t-shirt for an unconscious, self-pissing trauma victim? Hopefully as you age and move out of your sheltered life experiences you can realize that trolling gets old after awhile.
  - 12y ago
Animats 12y ago
911 for mobile is hard. Just routing to the right PSAP is tough. In the early days of cellular, California originally routed all cellular 911 calls to the California Highway Patrol, on the grounds that someone was probably calling from a car. The CHP ended up running a sizable call center to redirect emergency calls. Only recently did most phones have GPS capability. Picking the PSAP based on cell tower gets you to roughly the right place, but PSAPs have to have really good handoff capability to nearby jurisdictions, and some of them don't. All this is a separate issue from calling 911 and not getting any answer. That's a serious carrier failure and should be treated as such.
agarden 12y ago
This looks like an opportunity for an app. Your phone has GPS and a better idea of where you are than the cell network. What if you could open a 911 app, tick a few check boxes (Is this a medical emergency? violent situation? Do you require an ambulance, fire truck, and/or police?), and it would post your GPS coordinates and your cell number. The local dispatch office would than automatically call you and hook you up with a dispatcher who gets the details.
- peeters 12y ago
  What is this theoretical app providing that isn't established within the first 10 seconds of a 911 call?
  - bronbron 12y ago
    It could be a much faster, nicer way to answer the question 'where are you?' This is obviously anecdotal, but I've had to call 911 a couple times (I live in NYC, things happen on the subway). Explaining where I am took up 75% of those calls. They want very precise details and it's sometimes hard to answer to the level of detail they want. Example: I once had to call 911 when a woman fainted in the middle of the platform. I spent (seriously) several minutes explaining my location to the 911 operator. I was waiting for a train that only has one platform - the train goes east/west, and eastbound stops on the opposite side of the same platform as the westbound. The 911 operator couldn't process this and kept asking me whether I was on the westbound or the eastbound platform. We wasted a few minutes going back and forth on this - which could've been critical if the woman was in need of urgent medical care.
    - xanderstrike 12y ago
      It would also allow you to make a 911 "call" silently, which in some (admittedly rare) circumstances would be a huge benefit.
  - moatra 12y ago
    10 seconds
7402 12y ago
I understand that it's a good idea keep the local (10-digit) numbers in your phone for the police and fire departments where you live and work. See, for example the San Francisco PD web site http://www.sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=38 http://www.sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=38 which notes, "When calling 911 on a cellular phone near a highway, the call is connected to The California Highway Patrol (CHP) dispatch center."
nathannecro 12y ago
Please HN, there are a few comments in this thread talking about "taking action" if you happen to be a bystander during an emergency. Let me implore you. If the area isn't safe, do not even attempt to enter the scene. Fires can instantly flare up and engulf a room in seconds. Rivers can be so cold they cause shock upon entering the water and, in some cases, they cause cardiac arrest. Tiny pieces of broken glass can cause deep, sometimes life-threatening lacerations. An accident on the side of the road can immediately escalate into a multi-vehicle incident if another driver doesn't pay attention. What we don't want to happen is for you, the hero, to become another patient. Not only are you putting your life in danger, you're also increasing the risk for your rescuers as well. What you can do is this: 1. Secure the scene. If the accident occurred at the side of the road, park behind the accident and turn your hazards on. Wave at traffic to slow down and be cautious around the accident. If there is a house fire, try to find the gas shut-off valve and turn it off. 2. Assist the location of the scene. It's often difficult for EMS to locate the scene of the emergency. Standing near the front of the building or the entrance to the parking lot and flagging the ambulance/PD/fire down helps a ton. Leading them directly to the scene is just as important. 3. Use your common sense. Don't let the panic take hold of you. Be rational, reasonable. I'm not saying you should never try to help someone, just make sure that YOU are safe FIRST before heading in to assist. I hold EMT/Paramedic certs and volunteer in my spare time. Thanks. Edit: I also want to point out that there is generally very little anyone can do aside from basic management of the ABC's (airway, breathing and circulation) without equipment. Some of that equipment is located onboard a fire truck or an ambulance. Most of that equipment is usually found inside the operating room of your local hospital. The faster the patient is moved safely to the local ED, the better it is.
- nawitus 12y ago
  >Rivers can be so cold they cause shock upon entering the water and, in some cases, they cause cardiac arrest. While that's true, I don't think it's that dangerous. Winter swimming, for example, is not considered especially dangerous for healthy persons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_swimming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_swimming
  - 12y ago
elwell 12y ago
The main image say "911, what's your emergency?", but in my experience they have always intro'd with "911, where is your emergency?". I wonder if there was a protocol change where they figured that the location was the most important piece of information in case the phone call got cut short.
chaostheory 12y ago
The title should be clearer: E911 is not 911. This is why we still have an overpriced landline at my home.
alliejanoch 12y ago
I have had this experience in Maryland in 2009. Luckily it wasn't a very serious emergency in then end. There was a small explosion in our heater and I smelled smoke, so I wanted the fire department to check it out. I called 911 repeatedly on my cell and repeatedly got a busy signal, finally I went back in the house, got out my computer (before smart phones) and looked up the local fire department number. After they arrived they asked me if I called 911, and I said I couldn't get through and they said I needed to keep trying so they had it for their records?!? The fact that they asked sort of implies that this happens often (or maybe they just knew that I had called directly). It was a weird experience, and turned out that I was lucky that the heater hadn't completely exploded. I definitely don't think I will ever trust 911 again.
noir_lord 12y ago
What about setting up the phones so that dialling 911/999 etc shows the current GPS co-ordinates on the phone screen (on phones that GPS enabled). That or even a button on the screen that will "read" them to the telephone operator at the other end.

124 points by gr2020 12y ago

sssbc 12y ago

I worked for a cellular location company a decade ago, and the system was mostly used by US cell phone companies to meet the e911 US government requirements. The (entirely reasonable, at least at the time) most telling requirement was 95% of calls needed to be located within X meters (50 IIRC) of the real location. The other 5%? They could be on the moon. Perhaps things have tightened up, but physics prevents it from being 100% (never mind all the system changes always occurring - new towers, new equipment, new staff, ...). End result for those in the know: Use a land line, if you have a choice. If you don't, using a cell phone is still better than shouting in the woods. Another interesting point: most calls were from car wrecks, and these were usually reported multiple times (like ~40 911 calls per wreck from different people - average from metropolitan area). So playing the odds, its a safe system. But there will always be unlucky 911 callers - especially out in the boonies.

jisaacks 12y ago

I am on Sprint, would like to test my 9-1-1 coverage, but unsure how without making a false 9-1-1 call.

anderiv 12y ago
In setting up (and verifying) several VoIP E-911 systems and other PSTN phone systems, I've made dozens of "test" calls without issue. When the dispatcher answers, just tell them that you are testing 911 service and that you would like to verify that you got connected to the correct dispatching center. I've never had one of the dispatchers become upset at this - they want your 911 calls to succeed just as much as you do.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- superuser2 12y ago
  Yep. VoIP contractors (I was one) are usually required to call 911 from every location in a PBX system to make sure that the E911 data shows up correctly. There is usually a script for this, and the first words out of your mouth should be "This is a non-emergency call. I am testing <insert short description>. Is this a good time?" It tells the call-taker that they don't need to worry about you, and that you are being careful not to tie up resources. If they need to hang up and focus on priority calls, they will. Most likely, they'll be happy to help.
  - Aloha 12y ago
    You only need to do that if you're stupid frankly, all you need to do is insert dialing rules that if 911 call send the BTN/main number, if for all other calls send station DID - often this is done on the carrier side - so you should only need to place calls from one phone for the whole site. It's wholly impractical to do this as well for any site with more than 20 phones, I had customers with sites that has over 1000 stations on them.
    - superuser2 12y ago
      Sorry, by "location" I meant site, not station. Yes.
      - Aloha 12y ago
        That makes more sense, yes :-D - 911 routing issues were always vexing, usually it was a to the wrong PSAP.
        MichaelGG 12y ago
        One of the big players had a lovely-insane policy. They'd use your last MSAG-validated[1] address, regardless what new address you had provisioned. So, user's in Texas, gets an MSAG-validated address, everything's good. They move to Kentucky, change addresses. The new address would have some MSAG issue, and could take days or longer to resolve. This company thought the best thing to do was to route the call to Texas. (MSAG is the street addressing system that the PSAPs use. It can be considerably different from the postal address.)
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  I can understand doing this as part of your job to test a system but isn't it reckless for people to do it just to test their own phones? You're taking up one of a limited number of phones lines for 10-20 seconds, potentially leaving someone in a life threatening situation unable to get through in the only 10-20 seconds they have the opportunity to make the call in.
  - cbhl 12y ago
    If everyone did this at once, it might overwhelm the call center, but in general a E911 call center needs to have far more capacity than there are calls (or otherwise an urgent call might go unanswered). My understanding is the key rules are: 1) wait for an operator and do not hang up (because if you hang up they assume something bad happened and will send police/fire/etc to you), and, 2) tell them that it is a test call so that they can assess whether they can spend time on you or should hang up to answer a more urgent call. I'm sure kids call 911 enough as a prank that your test call won't have a meaningful impact on call volume.
    - click170 12y ago
      In my area there were actually advertisements on the radio asking people to use the lock function on their cellphone to prevent pocket-calls to 911 a few years back. They claimed it had become a problem. It leads me to wonder if your comment about capacity (which I assumed was the case as well) does not apply evenly everywhere.
      - cbhl 12y ago
        Well, if you don't tell them it's a test call and you pocket dial, I would hope that the 911 call center would assume that you're being held hostage and send police/fire/etc. to you. So, IMO, that the system isn't meant to handle this type of false alarm isn't reflective of call center capacity but rather fire/police/ambulance capacity (and also annoying everyone involved).
  - VLM 12y ago
    The system is built to tolerate 25 people calling in the same accident on the interstate or 100s of people calling in a plane crash. Last specs I heard around '10 was about a half million calls per day country wide. There are about 25 million small businesses in the country (accurate to only about one sig fig). If you assume a business tests a new phone system once per decade and there are about 10K days in a decade (close enough not to matter) then there will be about 2500 test calls per day out of 500000 total calls or basically its a rounding error. Now on the other hand, don't be a jerk. They're busy at certain times of day and they kinda expect people to make test calls during relatively boring business hours but not during rush hour or at bar close time. Don't be making test calls while a hurricane is hitting the city or while a t-storm is passing thru or a presidential visit or wildfires are kinda nearby, etc. I've done this helping out as part of PBX installs (admittedly a long time ago) and just be calm and clear and polite when verifying the address routing and remember to say "thanks" and its not a big deal.
MichaelGG 12y ago
I've started two E911 companies. Most answering points are "OK" with you testing if you immediately identify that you're testing and wish to confirm address information. They may put you on hold. In very rare cases, they might insist on dispatching.

nacho_weekend 12y ago

Fascinating, never thought about these implications before for network carriers.

knowaveragejoe 12y ago

Leneweaver attempted to track down Sprint employees about the outage, but couldn't reach anyone at the company. [...] Two weeks later, Leneweaver got in touch with the company. Erm, how is this okay?

thret 12y ago
You really shouldn't be allowed to sell a phone - or collect revenue from a phone - that isn't able to call 911.

t-rex1 12y ago

This is just crazy, the FCC keeping quiet is quite unbelievable.

MichaelGG 12y ago
It's more sensationalist than crazy. The only worthwhile point is that the FCC should get around to looking at the location accuracy requirements for indoor usage. But talking about the article, suppose there is a scheduled maintenance that will affect service, and there's no way around it. What exactly should the telco do? There's not a whole lot they can do. Yeah, it's bad if the service is unavailable, and generally, no one wants that to be the situation. But somehow trynna make it out to some terrible secret is silly.
- wtracy 12y ago
  Getting a fast busy signal when calling 911 when you have service and can reach normal numbers is a serious problem that needs to be resolved no matter what angle you take. For the other issues, agreed, there's only so much you can reasonably expect.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  If a tower is going to lose its ability to service critical calls, it should not be in charge of phones that could be on nearby towers.

Aloha 12y ago

This is why some states have chosen to go with a single PSAP for the whole state - Cellular E911 has a couple problems, one - the geolocation features of cell phones is best effort, and if it fails, the best the company can do is guess from which site/sector the call is coming in on to route them to the correct PSAP. Two - the cellular networks on whole are best effort, cellular as a technology cannot be as reliable as a wireline hookup, period. In the future, I believe the move to VoLTE will make E911 more reliable, as it will enable more location data to be sent from the handset at the time of call, but until then, the most reliable way to get geolocation data to a PSAP is to use a landline, period, the landline telephone, is and will remain more reliable, consistent and predictable than any of the technologies replacing it. As far as why the carrier couldnt be reached? likely calling the wrong place - Sprint FWIW is and has been in the midst of a forklift network upgrade for a couple years now, its just wrapping up now, but parts of the network have been partially non-functional for hours or days at a time - I know however that regular e911 drive testing is a part of test and turnup, and the planned maintenance process for Sprint.

MichaelGG 12y ago
FWIW, the landline tends to work because of the amount of manual processes that go into setting up the line in the first place.
- Aloha 12y ago
  Well, depends on what you mean by manual - most landline phones now can be hooked up without even a frame man having to run jumpers, or for that matter a field service visit, customer enters the provisioning information (service address, billing information, puts a credit card in) and the service is turned up.
gsnedders 12y ago
The UK has (essentially) one PSAP for the whole country (it's not actually — there's a number spread across the country for reasons of redundancy, but call allocations are done across the whole network). It has a few interesting results — most notably, when giving a location, they likely know nothing about it. If you say you're in "Central Park, Fakesville", and it's a small park where you can see the whole thing from the entrance, they will still ask you where about in the park you are — because they don't know. People in high-stress situations can end up wasting time trying to describe in gratuitous detail where they are, instead of just giving an answer like, "it's small; they'll see". I'm surprised that the situation wasn't handled better by the phones, though. At least here, if a mobile can contact any tower (regardless of network), an emergency call can be placed through it without charge. I suppose if the emergency line is already stagnated, trying again on a different network would just make it worse. Hmm…

F_J_H 12y ago

Interesting - carriers need to ..track callers to within 50 meters horizontally and 3 meters vertically This poses a problem in dense urban areas with high-rise buildings. The private sector companies mentioned in the article who "zipping ahead" of carriers can provide an altitude using things like wifi tracking, but that still needs to be cross-referenced to an actual floor number. (Keep in mind some buildings don't have a 13th floor, etc.) Barometers in phones don't work well indoors either... So, this may be a case where an FCC regulation is next to impossible to meet, unless someone can figure out how to map altitudes to actual building floor numbers at scale. Seems like that would be pretty labor intensive effort...

peeters 12y ago
Where does the FCC regulation say you need to map it to a specific floor? The carrier just has to say where the person is, not how to get to them. They don't have to provide navigation directions to the EMS crew do they? Seems to me like just giving an elevation and coordinates would be compliant.
- F_J_H 12y ago
  They need to be accurate within 3 meters vertically, and telling a first responder that a call came in from an area say 1000ft above sea level would not be that helpful to him/her when standing in front of a 45 storey building, wondering which floor they should go to. So, it would seem knowing the floor number would be super helpful (though maybe not a regulatory requirement as you say.)
  - gizmo686 12y ago
    Presumably, the first responder could could have an altimeter (or gps) and know their own height.
    - F_J_H 12y ago
      Better, but still not going to be overly helpful. Call came from 1000ft, first responder is standing at 750ft - there are 250ft of floors in between.

MichaelGG 12y ago

I started the first VoIP 9-1-1 service for providers. 9-1-1 and similar emergency response services are a great boon. Something most people just take for granted and figure it just works like magic. The job those people have is mostly thankless and comes with killer stress. (Listening to a few recordings, I'd have a breakdown within a day on that job.) On a more HN-note, I saw an interesting glimpse into how some of the responders view privacy. In context of what to do for VoIP phones, the general feeling at one NENA meeting was "ISPs should provide detailed location information on any access lines to VoIP devices". The implication there is that any software on your computer or network would be able to do a real "geo IP" lookup because your ISP would have to provide your address of record to anything using the connection. No one seemed to realise the massive problem this would create. The other interesting thing is that PSAPs are heading towards an interconnected model. The idea being (at least a few years ago) that PSAPs could all be on the Internet, and transfer calls to each other with SIP + some nutty extensions, bridge in translators, a real utopia. Which sounds nice until you realise so many PSAPs are woefully underfunded and in no position to be running critical infrastructure on the Internet. Hopefully states would step up and provide adequate funding and it could be pulled off as a government project. But it's not so clear, and there's a long way to go. One PSAP told us he didn't want us sending calls from "Internet phones" because his PSAP equipment might get a virus (over his voice line.)

Fogest 12y ago
SWAT'ing would be way too easy if there was a really easy VoIP solution to call 911.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  SWAT'ing is trivially performed. Sign up for VoIP service, dial 911. Many systems also have normal phone numbers that go into a 911 center, or to a failover call processing place. Police departments will also let you submit crime reports online. I "swatted" myself by accident after filing a report because one of my license plates was missing. I didn't get any follow up, so I figured I'd just go deal with it later. A bit after that, a cop pulls me over, draws his weapon, aims -- because my car pops up as stolen on his scanner. If someone was to file such a report on someone with concealed carry, I'll be the outcome could be pretty bad.

autism_hurts 12y ago

This may be slightly off-topic, but it's also important. 911 is not there to help you. You need to know how to help yourself. My story - Interstate 880 in the East Bay, Fremont, CA. Not a desolate stretch of highway, not in the middle of nowhere (I mean, Fremont sucks but...) I saw an SUV swerve and then roll in front of me on the highway. Took out 2 other cars as well. Slid on its roof about 50 feet then stopped. Gasoline, debris, and fruit (it was carrying fruit?) strewn about the Freeway. Tons of people pull over. Insanity. The car is still running, and gas is pouring out of the SUV. A bystander and myself get the passengers out. They're unconscious. I recognize the danger of moving them, but the fire danger was very real. Anyway, long story short -- guy goes into shock. Pisses himself, won't respond. 15 people had called 911. Elapsed time? 20 minutes. Still not a single local PD, Firetruck, or CHP officer. The first officer was DRIVING BY on the freeway and didn't know the accident had even happened. Imagine that was your wife, your son, your partner, your family. We had a nurse stop and give care. We also had a contractor who had a box of flares stop and close lanes for us. This was all citizens doing work. Shortly after this incident, I bought a handgun. Because I knew when seconds count, the police/fire/emt are MINUTES away. (I also took medical course)

deleted 12y ago
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Animats 12y ago
"The car is still running, and gas is pouring out of the SUV." ... "I bought a handgun." A fire extinguisher and a first aid kit in your car might be more useful.
- moggflunkies 12y ago
  You think it's wise to combat a SUV's worth of fuel with a fire extinguisher that fits in your car, on the side of the road? You think that a first aid kit was going to do anything more than what you could do with your bare hands or a t-shirt for an unconscious, self-pissing trauma victim? Hopefully as you age and move out of your sheltered life experiences you can realize that trolling gets old after awhile.
- 12y ago

Animats 12y ago

911 for mobile is hard. Just routing to the right PSAP is tough. In the early days of cellular, California originally routed all cellular 911 calls to the California Highway Patrol, on the grounds that someone was probably calling from a car. The CHP ended up running a sizable call center to redirect emergency calls. Only recently did most phones have GPS capability. Picking the PSAP based on cell tower gets you to roughly the right place, but PSAPs have to have really good handoff capability to nearby jurisdictions, and some of them don't. All this is a separate issue from calling 911 and not getting any answer. That's a serious carrier failure and should be treated as such.

agarden 12y ago

This looks like an opportunity for an app. Your phone has GPS and a better idea of where you are than the cell network. What if you could open a 911 app, tick a few check boxes (Is this a medical emergency? violent situation? Do you require an ambulance, fire truck, and/or police?), and it would post your GPS coordinates and your cell number. The local dispatch office would than automatically call you and hook you up with a dispatcher who gets the details.

peeters 12y ago
What is this theoretical app providing that isn't established within the first 10 seconds of a 911 call?
- bronbron 12y ago
  It could be a much faster, nicer way to answer the question 'where are you?' This is obviously anecdotal, but I've had to call 911 a couple times (I live in NYC, things happen on the subway). Explaining where I am took up 75% of those calls. They want very precise details and it's sometimes hard to answer to the level of detail they want. Example: I once had to call 911 when a woman fainted in the middle of the platform. I spent (seriously) several minutes explaining my location to the 911 operator. I was waiting for a train that only has one platform - the train goes east/west, and eastbound stops on the opposite side of the same platform as the westbound. The 911 operator couldn't process this and kept asking me whether I was on the westbound or the eastbound platform. We wasted a few minutes going back and forth on this - which could've been critical if the woman was in need of urgent medical care.
  - xanderstrike 12y ago
    It would also allow you to make a 911 "call" silently, which in some (admittedly rare) circumstances would be a huge benefit.
- moatra 12y ago
  10 seconds

7402 12y ago

I understand that it's a good idea keep the local (10-digit) numbers in your phone for the police and fire departments where you live and work. See, for example the San Francisco PD web site http://www.sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=38 http://www.sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=38 which notes, "When calling 911 on a cellular phone near a highway, the call is connected to The California Highway Patrol (CHP) dispatch center."

nathannecro 12y ago

Please HN, there are a few comments in this thread talking about "taking action" if you happen to be a bystander during an emergency. Let me implore you. If the area isn't safe, do not even attempt to enter the scene. Fires can instantly flare up and engulf a room in seconds. Rivers can be so cold they cause shock upon entering the water and, in some cases, they cause cardiac arrest. Tiny pieces of broken glass can cause deep, sometimes life-threatening lacerations. An accident on the side of the road can immediately escalate into a multi-vehicle incident if another driver doesn't pay attention. What we don't want to happen is for you, the hero, to become another patient. Not only are you putting your life in danger, you're also increasing the risk for your rescuers as well. What you can do is this: 1. Secure the scene. If the accident occurred at the side of the road, park behind the accident and turn your hazards on. Wave at traffic to slow down and be cautious around the accident. If there is a house fire, try to find the gas shut-off valve and turn it off. 2. Assist the location of the scene. It's often difficult for EMS to locate the scene of the emergency. Standing near the front of the building or the entrance to the parking lot and flagging the ambulance/PD/fire down helps a ton. Leading them directly to the scene is just as important. 3. Use your common sense. Don't let the panic take hold of you. Be rational, reasonable. I'm not saying you should never try to help someone, just make sure that YOU are safe FIRST before heading in to assist. I hold EMT/Paramedic certs and volunteer in my spare time. Thanks. Edit: I also want to point out that there is generally very little anyone can do aside from basic management of the ABC's (airway, breathing and circulation) without equipment. Some of that equipment is located onboard a fire truck or an ambulance. Most of that equipment is usually found inside the operating room of your local hospital. The faster the patient is moved safely to the local ED, the better it is.

nawitus 12y ago
>Rivers can be so cold they cause shock upon entering the water and, in some cases, they cause cardiac arrest. While that's true, I don't think it's that dangerous. Winter swimming, for example, is not considered especially dangerous for healthy persons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_swimming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_swimming
- 12y ago

elwell 12y ago

The main image say "911, what's your emergency?", but in my experience they have always intro'd with "911, where is your emergency?". I wonder if there was a protocol change where they figured that the location was the most important piece of information in case the phone call got cut short.

chaostheory 12y ago

The title should be clearer: E911 is not 911. This is why we still have an overpriced landline at my home.

alliejanoch 12y ago

I have had this experience in Maryland in 2009. Luckily it wasn't a very serious emergency in then end. There was a small explosion in our heater and I smelled smoke, so I wanted the fire department to check it out. I called 911 repeatedly on my cell and repeatedly got a busy signal, finally I went back in the house, got out my computer (before smart phones) and looked up the local fire department number. After they arrived they asked me if I called 911, and I said I couldn't get through and they said I needed to keep trying so they had it for their records?!? The fact that they asked sort of implies that this happens often (or maybe they just knew that I had called directly). It was a weird experience, and turned out that I was lucky that the heater hadn't completely exploded. I definitely don't think I will ever trust 911 again.

noir_lord 12y ago

What about setting up the phones so that dialling 911/999 etc shows the current GPS co-ordinates on the phone screen (on phones that GPS enabled). That or even a button on the screen that will "read" them to the telephone operator at the other end.