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TruePosition® Emergency Call Location SolutionMobile phones have become the dominant means of voice communication throughout the world. For this reason, governments everywhere are currently investigating how to process the ever-increasing number of emergency phone calls (112, 999, etc.) coming from mobile phones. According to the United States Federal Communication Commission (FCC) records, of the 200 million calls to 911 in the United States last year, about one third were from callers using a mobile phone. In some communities, over half of the 911 calls came from wireless callers. This trend — people canceling their landline service in favor of using a cell phone as their only phone — will continue. With mobile phones, the person calling the emergency number could be almost anywhere. Added to this, in emergency situations people are often panicked or disoriented, and cannot provide their exact location. As a result, it is getting more difficult for government agencies to respond to calls coming from mobile phones, and to send the appropriate emergency response resources. When a mobile phone user is in an emergency situation and dials the emergency number, there is little room for error. They need to be accurately located regardless of their environment or the mobile phone that they are using. Designing and deploying a high-performance wireless location platform allows governments to:
The TruePosition® Location Platform™(TPLP™) incorporates a high-performance, network-based location technology called Uplink Time Difference of Arrival (U-TDOA), which is ideal for mission-critical Emergency Call Location applications. Improve emergency response times. In emergency situations, every second counts. When someone calls an emergency number, often the person does not know exactly where they are, may not speak the native language, or may not be able to speak at all. For all of these compelling reasons, it is necessary for governments to empower the Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) with the ability to quickly and accurately locate mobile phones in emergency situations. In the emergency responder world, The Golden Hour refers to that first hour after an incident takes place. If critical care is not administered within The Golden Hour, the victim’s chance of survival diminishes greatly. In short, the ability to accurately locate the incident improves response times, and as a result, saves lives. Effectively manage valuable public safety resources. If an exact location cannot be confirmed, emergency responders often spend precious time aimlessly searching for the correct location. Sometimes, this means that additional vehicles or even costly helicopters must be deployed in order to simply assess where the situation is taking place, rather than getting important personnel at the heart of the incident. U-TDOA location technology can locate as many emergency callers as necessary, so that PSAPs can cross-reference the origins of calls and more easily pinpoint the exact site of the emergency. The ability to quickly and accurately locate emergency callers allows emergency services to be deployed more rapidly and efficiently, saving precious minutes and precious funds. Enable a wide range of additional safety and security applications. Once a high-performance location technology, like U-TDOA, is put into place, it enables a wide range of additional safety and security applications. For instance, U-TDOA can be extended beyond the location of mobile phones. Small devices, which can be worn around the wrist of Alzheimer’s patients or people with other forms of dementia, enable caregivers to use the location infrastructure to monitor loved ones or locate them if they wander or get lost. Leverage lessons learned from the world’s largest location-based public safety solution. In the mid-1990s, the FCC in the United States released a mandate, which stated that all mobile operators needed to employ a wireless location solution to determine the phone number of all mobile callers that dialed 911. Phase II of the E-911 mandate requires that network-based wireless location systems locate 67 percent of calls within 100 meters and 95 percent of calls within 300 meters. TruePosition’s U-TDOA wireless location technology has met the requirements in all environments and in all air interfaces. According to the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), E-911 services currently cover 95 percent of the wireless subscribers in the United States, which translates into hundreds of millions of people. Furthermore, the E-911 system in the United States is widely regarded as an overwhelming success by the emergency response communities. Thanks to the advances already made in the United States, other countries have a solid foundation to build on. For one, the technology needed to deploy a standard emergency number service, like 112 or 999, is a proven technology and is readily available. Currently, TruePosition’s wireless location platform is deployed across the United States in the AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile networks, as well as in several smaller, rural networks. Today, TruePosition has more than 65,000 Location Measurement Units (LMUs) installed, which locate more than 5 million emergency phone calls each month. Due to the potentially grave nature of safety-related services, it is absolutely critical to be able to accurately locate the caller every time they need assistance. At the heart of the TruePosition Emergency Call Location solution is the high-performance network-based U-TDOA location technology, which allows the system to:
TruePosition’s U-TDOA technology uses timing data from as little as three and as many as 50 receiving antennas, enabling the highest accuracy for a network-based system. In addition, because it is completely network-based, U-TDOA works with all mobile phones. Each TruePosition LMU includes six radio frequency (RF) receivers, which is three-times what alternative TDOA location systems use. This results in superior memory and processing power to calculate locations quickly and accurately. Unlike GPS, U-TDOA works well in all kinds of conditions, from outlying rural areas, to inside dense buildings, to mountainous areas, to cities with tall buildings. Whether a person is in their house or hiking in the middle of nowhere, the caller can be located. According to Ovum, however, the emergency call is more likely going to come from inside a building, since about 60 percent of all cellular phone calls are made indoors. The technology is revolutionary. The benefits are priceless. Only TruePosition has the intellectual property, technical expertise and unparalleled operational experience to provide mission-critical, location-based safety and security solutions like Emergency Call Location. Today, TruePosition’s U-TDOA location technology keeps over 100 million wireless subscribers in the United States safe and secure. To learn more about how the TruePosition Location Platform can be used for Emergency Call Location, please click here. |