Ten 911 call centres won’t make CRTC deadline for enhanced 911 cellphone services

Ten communities across Canada will not be ready to meet the CRTC’s Feb. 1 deadline for enhanced 911 cellphone services, the commission says. Phase II of the enhanced 911 services, known as E911, enables 911 call centres to pinpoint the locations of people making emergency 911 calls on cellphones. The 911 call centres, known technically as Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), handle 911 calls. There are about 130 PSAPs across Canada. On Feb. 2, 2009, the CRTC gave the wireless carriers and the call centres one year to implement the Phase II E911 technology. But there remain 10 communities across the country that will not be ready to implement it by the deadline. “All the wireless providers are on track,” CRTC spokesman Denis Carmel said. “ some PSAPs are a little late.” The Phase II technology allows emergency responders to locate 911 cellphone callers through GPS or triangulation. If a caller’s phone does not have GPS enabled, their position can be determined by crossing the signals of two or more cell phone towers. Until the E911 technology came into place, when someone called 911 with a cellphone, responders could not locate them. They could only guess at the position of the caller by the nearest cell phone tower. “It was probably the largest collaboration ever between the wireless industry and the public safety community to date,” said Marc Choma, director of communications for the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA). According to Choma, there are about 7,000 cell phone towers in Canada. The new E911 service had to be tested for each tower site. Each wireless carrier was responsible for its own costs to implement the technology. In many cases 911 access fees covered those costs. Forrester Research’s Brownlee Thomas is critical of Canada’s late adoption of the Phase II E911 technology. In the United States, Phase II first started to appear in October 2001. “We’re really about nine years behind,” Thomas said. But Choma said the adoption of the technology in the United States may not be as far ahead as it appears. There remain many pockets in the United States that do not yet have the service. “It’s a very mixed bag in the US, and that’s because it has been rolled out on a county-by-county basis.” Staff Sgt. Murray Knowles, a spokesman for the Ottawa Police, said that, in isolated areas, the accuracy of triangulation technology suffers when cellphone towers are too far apart. Some areas are outside the range of towers altogether, Choma said. GPS also has its limitations because the device must be outdoors to receive signals from satellites. The advanced E911 service will not be available in small remote communities that are not equipped with 911 services. The CRTC’s Carmel said that most of Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, do not have 911 services. In areas that don’t have 911 services, Choma said, wireless carriers often redirect 911 calls to local emergency service numbers. PSAPs that won’t make the deadline and their expected readiness dates Nelson, BC To be determined Kyetech (Westlock), Alta. To be determined Seaway (Bay of Quinte), Ont. To be determined Smiths Falls, Ont. To be determined Moncton, NB April 2010 Gatineau, Que. April 2010 Caucascau, Que. April 2010 Sherbrooke, Que. To be determined Laval, Que. February 2010 Longueuil, Que. February 2010

Ten 911 call centres won’t make CRTC deadline for enhanced 911 cellphone services

News | January 27, 2010

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