Cellular-phone customers may think their service includes access to anything and anyone they need 24 hours a day, but the value of the technological wonder many consider a lifeline in an emergency will depend on which North Carolina county customers are in when they make the call to 911 for help.
The uneven capability to detect a cell caller’s location in North Carolina exists despite the fact that the state’s wireless users have paid more than $125 million in monthly cell-phone surcharges since 1997 to upgrade systems that serve the growing cell-phone market. In 2003, 40 percent, or more than 2.5 million of the 6,289,848 calls made to 911 in North Carolina, were dialed from cell phones. The calls are answered by one of the state’s 126 public safety answering points. Some counties have more than one. The level of service provided depends on how quickly and efficiently the answering points and commercial wireless carriers have worked together using the nearly $75 million in cell-phone taxes distributed to them as of Dec. 31, 2003.
Two-thirds of North Carolina’s counties are considered 100 percent compliant with Phase I of Federal Communication Commission standards for enhanced wireless 911 services. That means a 911 cell call can provide the operator with the number of the caller and the cell tower address, said Frank Thomason, a member of North Carolina’s 911 Wireless Advisory Board and director of emergency services for Rowan County. “It’s a big jump. It doesn’t pinpoint the call, but gives the general area and direction of where the call is coming from. At least the needle is now in a particular haystack,” Thomason said.
Another 31 counties are working toward that capability. Depending on the county, implementation ranges from 25 percent to 75 percent complete. Lagging behind are Warren and Anson counties, which haven’t yet begun wireless work. Warren County activated its wire line 911 service only for calls from hard-wire phones late last year, said Richard Taylor, executive director of the 911 advisory board. Anson did the same in late April. Before that, nailing down a location from a 911 caller in Anson County was dependent on “things like turn left at the tree,” Taylor said.
Yancey County holds the dubious distinction as the least-prepared county, Taylor and Thomason said. Well, not exactly, said Bill Davis, the county’s E-911 coordinator. Yancey County’s operation will be ready to implement FCC-required technology in July, Davis said. Once the wireless carriers serving the area are also ready, he said, Yancey County will be among the state’s most technologically advanced, although he’s unsure when it will happen. Davis dismissed the notion that Yancey County is lagging. “We’re behind but we’re ahead,” he said.
Once Yancey’s 911 system is operational, callers from traditional hard lines will also benefit, Davis said. Currently, 911 calls are answered by the sheriff’s office, which can’t tell the phone number or location of any caller, whether from a hard-line phone or a wireless phone. With enhanced technology in place, all 911 calls will go to the local public safety answering point and the operator will be able to identify the number and location of every call.
Twelve commercial phone carriers operate in North Carolina, but not all operate in every county. As they roll out the FCC-required technology, the public safety answering points around the state must be able to receive and display the information transmitted from the carriers’ phones. Some answering points have found they need new hardware to get the job done. Others lack necessary software. Some spent time negotiating the bureaucratic maze to determine whether other government departments already possess what they need for enhanced 911 services.
The surcharge paid by cell-phone users is administered by the 911 Wireless Advisory Board, created by the General Assembly in 1997 in response to an FCC mandate to provide emergency services to cell-phone customers. The 911 service is based on 1970s technology in which identifying information is imbedded in a traditional hard-line phone. That data is transmitted to the public service answering point during a call to 911. The challenge is to implement technology to provide equivalent emergency services for wireless customers.
Pat Garner, communications supervisor for the Sanford Police Department, knows how vital the capability is to public safety. Before he became the supervisor in Sanford, he spent 11 years answering 911 calls. He vividly remembers a young woman who, in 1999, called from her cell phone pleading for help. She was having an anxiety attack, was disoriented, and couldn’t tell Garner where she was. Enhanced 911 technology wasn’t yet in place, so Garner had to ask her questions until he was able to determine where she was. That took about five minutes. “I was suffering from a little anxiety myself… she wasn’t alone in that,” he said, recalling the urgency of the moment.
Taylor thinks the safety impact of enhanced 911 services will continue to grow because of a “big market shift” toward cell phones, which includes replacing home-based phones with wireless ones. “We hear stories all the time about now being able to locate people,” he said of progress around the state.
Thankfully, Garner’s 1999 call had a good ending. But the more technology that’s in place, the easier and faster it is to locate the caller. That’s the point of Phase II of the FCC requirements. The stricter rules require carriers to install technology in phones, and the answering points to receive the information, which pinpoints a caller’s location using latitude and longitude coordinates. A county can’t begin implementation until its Phase I service is in place. Taylor said 59 counties have made requests to their carriers for Phase II coverage. In those 59 counties, carriers have completed 55 percent of the deployment.
Rowan County is 100 percent Phase II deployed, and in 2001 was designated North Carolina’s enhanced 911 “model community” by the National Association of Public Safety Communications Officials. Rowan and other communities around the country periodically report to the FCC as a barometer on progress.
Thomason thinks North Carolina is doing well compared to other states. Looming, however, is a potential stumbling block the 911 advisory board, carriers, and public safety answering points can’t control: the sticky fingers of politicians looking for cash to divert into the state’s general operating fund.
The enhanced 911 surcharge revenue has proved a tempting target. Even though the taxes are earmarked for enhanced wireless 911 use, the General Assembly in March snatched $33 million from the board’s pot designated to reimburse carriers for their costs, and put it into the general fund. That’s on top of about $5 million the legislature confiscated in fiscal 2000-2001, and $2.5 million it took in 2001-2002.
Taylor is bracing for another $25 million hit in April or May 2005. So far, the 911 fund’s revenues have been ahead of expenditures, so all carrier bills have been paid. But, next May is when Taylor projects the board will be unable to pay carrier invoices on a timely basis. They’ll eventually get their money, he said, plus 8 percent interest. Taylor’s not happy about it, and neither are the carriers.
“If you had $58 million taken from you, how would you feel?” he asked.
Donna Martinez is associate editor of Carolina Journal.