OMG, Canada Tests Txt Msg 4 Calling 911

The Canadian telecom regulation agency has accepted a report from one of its sub-committees, noting that various forms of text messaging are “not viable solutions” for contacting 911 by people with hearing or speech disabilities, and accepting the group’s proposal to conduct a field trial of so-called SMS T911 to determine its effectiveness. Right now, only a handful of comm centers in the U.S. accept text messaging directly from customers, but those messages are usually limited to specific carriers within a region, and have notable limitations on transmission reliability and transmitting the caller’s location. A future NG911 network might better accommodate text messaging devices. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced that its Interconnection Steering Committee had found text messaging impractical for reaching public safety answering points (PSAP)—the text message networks don’t support intelligent routing to the correct PSAP, and they don’t provide subscriber identification data such as the telephone number. The committee also noted the upcoming development of next-generation 911 networks, which would make current technologies obsolete. So the committee proposed testing a hybrid technology: SMT T911 via silent wireles voice call. Under that technique, a person with a hearing or speech disability would dial 911 on a voice cellular phone, and their pre-registered personal information would appear indicating their disability. The caller’s location would be displayed by the normal cellular network methods. The 911 calltaker would respond back to the caller using SMS messages. The CRTC acknowledged that this method would “required PSAPs to change their call handling procedures.” The trial could last 12 to 18 months, the agency noted. Read about the CRTC decision to approve the committee’s report here, and download (pdf) a copy of the committee report on text messaging 911 here.