No matter that future wireless technology will do everything from make your coffee in the morning to balance your checkbook at night, the enduring value-revolutionary hallmark-of mobile phones remains their ability to facilitate real-time human communication, heretofore artificially restricted by twisted copper wire in the wall. That is the simple, unspectacular genius of wireless technology.
The point was underscored in the senseless massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. That some students under siege could connect via mobile phone to 911 emergency dispatchers and parents was valuable in ways incalculable.
Mobile phone carriers and manufacturers have shown themselves to be good corporate citizens in donating and subsidizing handsets, cell sites and airtime to schools around the country. Keep it up.
There will be, I suspect, an irresistible temptation for industry to embrace Littleton to make points on safety and educational benefits of wireless technology in classrooms and beyond school grounds. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Just be careful. There is a fine line between trying to salvage something from horrific events and trading on someone’s tragedy.
My sense (hope) is Congress will pass E911 legislation whether or not Columbine becomes a rallying cry on Capitol Hill.
There is a tendency, too, to make calamities, like Columbine, the intellectual predicate for any number of public-policy pronouncements. This is not altogether bad, either. Columbine is a wake-up call that has re-energized the debate on root causes of societal violence.
Yet, as important a public-safety tool as mobile phones are, several issues remain unresolved that go to the heart of a bigger question: Are phones as good a public-safety asset as they can be?
Depends on whom you ask. The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association says 98,000-plus 911 calls a day from mobile phones speaks volumes. Can’t argue with that.
The Wireless Consumers Alliance says the industry could do better if only analog cellular systems were engineered to pass through 911 calls whenever a signal-A or B-is around.
CTIA says the FCC could do better if only it exhibited more leadership on antenna siting, 911 universality and limited liability protection-things Congress has picked up because the agency didn’t. Meanwhile, Phase II E911-set to go into effect in October 2001-is headed south.
The FCC says it can’t dictate to the states, which need to put funding mechanisms in place to pay for E911.
Maybe Columbine will reverse all this lallygagging.
