Responding to several recent tragedies and with industry assistance, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has given Canadian wireless carriers a Feb.1, 2010 deadline to upgrade their 9-1-1 services. By that date at the latest, emergency responders must be able to determine the location of a person using a cellphone to call 9-1-1 with much greater precision.

 

In addition, any new wireless service provider entering the Canadian market after February 1, 2010 will be required to support the enhanced 911 features from the moment it launches.

 

New enhanced features, which will bring Canada’s mobile 9-1-1 up to U.S. standards, will make use of wireless-location technologies to greatly improve the ability of emergency responders to locate a person using a cellphone to call 9-1-1. For instance, wireless carriers can use Global Positioning System (GPS) or triangulation and then automatically transmit the caller’s location to the 9-1-1 operator. This will allow emergency responders to determine a caller’s location generally within a radius of 10 to 300 meters (32 to 985 feet) from the cellphone.

 

Current 9-1-1 services rely on the position of the cellphone tower nearest to the caller. As such, emergency responders are only able to determine if a caller is in a sector within the area served by the tower, and not a specific area or location.

 

The technology upgrades will be done in stages over the next 12 months. A working group consisting of representatives from the industry and other interested parties will submit a proposed roll-out schedule to the CRTC by May 4, 2009.

 

“With more than 20 million wireless subscribers in Canada, it is imperative that emergency responders can quickly and accurately locate those who use their cellphones to call 9-1-1,” says CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C. “I am pleased that the industry has come forward with a technical solution, and that there is now nothing standing in the way of the implementation of enhanced 9-1-1 features. The safety and security of Canadians will be greatly improved as a result.”

 

The wireless industry is preparing for the long-anticipated change. It says local government agencies responsible for 9-1-1 need to do likewise.

 

“The CRTC says we have to make the deadline and the members in the industry will do everything they can to make the deadline,” Bernard Lord, president of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association told the Canadian Press. “[Agencies and governments] will need to make some major investments to make sure that the information that we provide once we're ready, that they can use it to dispatch someone.”