If a 911 Public Safety Answering Point agrees to receive 911 calls from phones that have never been activated on a cellular network, wireless operators are obligated to pass the call, according to new government rules.
Cellular operators who are not happy about that say they are waiting for the Federal Communications Commission to distribute the full text of the rules it adopted June 12 regarding 911 emergency services and wireless networks. Petitions for reconsideration may be filed.
“Generally, we oppose passing the information on because there is too great a likelihood of fraud or criminal misbehavior,” said Bill Covington, regulatory counsel for AT&T Wireless Services Inc.
In recent years, emergency 911 organizations have expressed concern to the FCC that calls coming from cellular phones are problematic. The average citizen buying a cellular phone for safety believes the 911 operator will know where they are calling from, believing that it operates like their landline phone at home. But criminals have figured out that calls entering the 911 switchboard don’t come with a phone number or a location, as they do when arriving from a landline phone.
“We missed out on influencing this when cellular hit the market,” said Robert Gojanovich, chairman of the network subcommittee for the National Emergency Number Association. “So now we have cellular users walking around thinking they can call 911 when the PSAP doesn’t have a clue where they are.”
PSAPs (Public Safety Answering Points) say many of their nuisance calls come from cellular phones, and they hesitate to handle calls for which there is no call-back phone number and no location. And the identity of the phone subscriber is unknown.
Making matters worse, some people who call 911 from cellular phones are not current subscribers, or service was never activated so they have not been assigned a mobile identification number by an operator.
Those callers can’t be identified at any level, short of an electronic serial number, which is installed in every manufactured phone. But identifying the device without subscriber information doesn’t identify the person calling for help, which defeats the purpose of an enhanced 911 system, cellular operators say.
The government’s ruling is clear in that it wants to see the PSAPs and wireless operators provide 911 service to all citizens. And it states that wireless operators must pass calls from phones with a MIN.
But the ultimate decision about handling calls from handsets with no MIN has been left up to individual PSAPs and the wireless operator. If the PSAPs wants all calls, from any device in any condition, the wireless operator must pass the call on.
“We decided that any call that has a MIN in the handset needs to be passed to the PSAP, whether they are a subscriber or not,” said John Cimko, chief of the FCC policy division. “If the handset has no MIN, the PSAPs can decide whether they want to take such calls or not.”
Cellular operators differ in their approach to 911 at this time. Ameritech Cellular passes all 911 calls through to PSAPs, the company said. GTE also passes all 911 calls, subscriber or not.
Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile and BellSouth Cellular Corp. are not such an easy touch.
“If the user of a cellular phone is anybody’s subscriber, we complete the call, free of charge. If they’re not a subscriber of anyone, we generally don’t complete the call,” said Jim Gerace, spokesman for Bell Atlantic Nynex.
BellSouth’s spokeswoman Nicole Lipson said, “Legitimate subscribers and roamers are passed. If they are not a subscriber of any carrier, 911 calls are blocked.”
The cellular industry isn’t completely in control of this issue, Lipson said.
“There are many groups involved. If the FCC mandates it, we’ll do it. But we consider our service something valuable that a customer pays for. You don’t get electricity if you don’t pay your bill. Our customers will have to carry the burden because we’re a business. Cellular phone use is a choice people make,” Lipson said.
The FCC also decided it wasn’t getting involved in the funding of enhanced 911 service for wireless. The PSAP and wireless operator are obligated to work out a funding mechanism at the local or state level.
In the next five years, PSAPs and wireless operators nationwide will work through four evolutionary paths to equip networks so that wireless callers can be identified and located. Here’s what is planned, based on FCC requirements.
When a wireless user calls 911 today, generally the call goes to the cell site and passes through the MTSO as a 10-digit telephone number. The number enters the central office, but by the time it is routed to 911, it is not accompanied by a phone number.
Phase I is to create a Pseudo Automatic Number Identification (ANI). The wireless users dials 911, it goes to a cell site. Each cell site is assigned a phone number, which goes into the central office and is passed to E911. The 911 operator receives carrier name, a cell-site phone number, with the cell site address, the latitude/longitude, serving radius, roam access number and sector bearing information.
“We fool the network into thinking it’s getting an ANI,” said Robert Gojanovich of NEMA. “It’s a way to identify the sector or general vicinity of the call. We haven’t exactly nailed down where the caller is, but it’s a step.”
To complete Phase I, operators assign a phone number to each antenna so the MTSO receives the cell site phone number and an antenna number. If the phone has a MIN, that should provide the device’s phone number.
Phase II involves adding location technology such as time difference of arrival or some other sort of triangulation system. With location technology in the network, the wireless subscriber would call 911, the call would go to the MTSO then pass to a data system. There, the location and the subscriber would be identified and sent to the 911 operator, who would receive phone numbers, the speed/direction, latitude/longitude, the subscriber’s name and home address and the cell site address.
