Day 2
Panels Discuss
Privacy, Technology,
and Rural America
During the second day of the AIC conference on wireless 911, several panels and individual speakers shared their expertise on all sides of the issue.
Montana Wireless 911
In a prepared presentation, Surry Latham, E911 program manager for the state of Montana, said Basic and Enhanced 911 is available from 56 counties and seven Indian reservations, over an enormous area of 147,138 square miles, but a population of just 857,000.
He explained that the state's residents are concentrated in seven major metro centers, served by 59 public safety answering points (PSAP). Most of the comm center serve just one county, but Latham said there are five multi-county centers, three Indiana reservations with their own centers, and five towns that have separate PSAPs from the county.
Latham said, with the completion of B911 in the small towns of Culbertson and Cooke City, Montana will have state-wide B911 coverage. Enhanced 911 has just been implemented for Billings, Great Falls and three counties, and fourth county is nearly on-line.
As you would imagine, Latham said the major problems for Montana's 911 system are its large size and small population. The results in a limited funding base, which in turn is affected by recent voter initiatives that have reduced the ability to raise taxes.
As for wireless 911, Latham said Montana will benefit more from wireless 911 more than wireline 911, because of the large number of highway miles and visitors. He added that PSAPs are more interested in Phase II wireless 911, in which callers are located precisely, than in Phase I, where dispatchers see only the caller's telephone number and the address of the receiving antenna.
Wireless 911 in Rural America
Charles Hinkle, chief operating officer of KSI Inc., prepared a presentation on how rural America would be affected by Phase II wireless 911 capabilities.
He said residents of rural America know the area, travel rural roads, have fewer cellular phones and encounter problems and emergencies year around. On the other hand, visitors are unfamiliar with the area, travel on main roads, have more access to wireless phones and generally travel in summer. Hinkle said 24.9 percent of the U.S. population lives in a rural environment.
Hinkle said there are over 6.8 million police-reported motor vehicles crashes in 1996, with one-third resulting in an injury, and less then one percent involving a fatality. He added that 56 percent of fatal crashes involve a single vehicle, and that over one-half of fatal crashes occurred on roads with speed limits over 55 mph. About 40 percent of fatalities involved crashes with fixed objects.
Hinkle presented graphs that showed that more urban crashes occurred between zero and 30 mph, and decrease in frequency as the speed increases. Rural accident follow exactly the opposite pattern-most occur from 50 mph and higher, and the fewest occur between zero and 30 mph.
More important, Hinkle said that the medical response to rural accidents isn't equal to urban areas. His graph showed that, in urban areas, hospital travel times are about 30 minutes. But in rural areas, travel times are generally two hours.
Hinkle explained the technology of the various location technologies, including AOA, TDOA and TOA, and talked about the enhancements necessary for rural areas because of widely-spaced antennas and varying geography. In some cases, he said antennas are spaced 10 to 20 miles apart, which strains the accuracy of angle-based location technologies.
Hinkle's presentation also included two other special areas of concern for Phase II capabilities: educational campuses (average size of the country's 120 largest colleges and universities is 1.8 square miles), and retirment communities (some average a square mile).
Network-Based Phase II
During a panel discussion, participants discussed how network-based location technologies worked, and the pros and cons.
The panel pointed out that location technologies based on the wireless carrier's network can exploit existing transmission methods, and determine location by measuring the angle at which a wireless signal is received at the antenna. This angle-of-attack (AOA) method is not constrained by a radio transmission format or type, operates in most environments, requires no modification to existing subscriber equipment, imposes minimal network overhead and offers high performance (low delay, high accuracy, low cost).
GPS for Phase II
Another panel discussed another approach to meeting Phase II location requirements-global positioning system (GPS) chips embedded in the mobile wireless device.
Robert Tendler, developer of the FoneFinder device, explained how his GPS-based equipment can be married to existing portable devices, and how it verbally gives the phone's latitude and longitude after a caller dials 911. The phone redials 911 if it's busy, and uses the last determined location if the phone happens to be in a location that's blocked from the overhead GPS satellites.
The FoneFinder's antenna is mounted on the top of the device, so no matter how the phone is held or dropped, it will be "looking" at the sky. The phone can even be rigged to speak a car's license plate number, to aid in locating a person in danger. The phone can also be linked to various other vehicle systems (airbag, alarm, panic button, etc.) to allow automatic 911 dialing.
Dr. Dan Schlager then explained how he developed a personal alarm device for the marine safety industry. He started a company, Zoltar Satellite Alarm Systems (named after the fortune teller in the Tom Hanks movie "Big"), to market the technology to wireless carriers as well. Schlager, an emergency room doctor by profession, said the device can be worn on a life vest or imbedded in portable wireless phones to transmit a user's location.
Kanwar Chadha, director of marketing for SiRF Technologies, impressed the audience by demonstrating how small GPS chipsets would become in the future. He held up a small-sized wireless phone and said that, just a few years ago, no one believed that GPS could be housed completely inside the phone. He then held up an older GPS circuit board, which was almost the same size as the wireless phone. Chadha then held up the current GPS circuitry, which was about the size of a large postage stamp, and about as thin. Then Chadha held up a fleck-sized semiconductor, and predicted that GPS would soon shrivel to that size.
Chadha's presentation focused on the differences between network and GPS-based location methods. He said network solutions require multiple cell sites to determine a position, may have significant problems with CDMA networks, may require significant infrastructure investment, have limited improvement potential, and raise privacy issues.
He noted that GPS handsets have worldwide compatibility, have no usage fees, are based on open standards, and have a much better potential for future improvements in location accuracy. Chadha said differential GPS could give wireless phones better than five meter location accuracy.
On the other hand, GPS solutions make all calculations in the handset and send the x-y-z information to the network. Chadha said the location calculation can be either all within the handset, all within the network, or shared between the two sections of a wireless system. He explained the advantages of both options, including load on the network, dependence upon network capabilities, open interface and performance. Chadha said his company's technology focuses on the stand-along and network assisted modes.
Chadha said during tests in Kings County (Wash.), SiRF-equipped phones used several protocols, including CDMA, DAMPS, AMPS, N-AMPS AND iDEN. The tests logged 10,000 calls, including 5200 for calibration and testing. Of those calls, 67 percent were within 70 feet of the wireless phone's actual location.
Russ Russell, senior product manager for GTE's 911 unit, then spoke about GPS from a telephone company viewpoint. Russell said the 911 districts generally would like a wireless 911 solution to be immediately available, rather than phased in, as in a handset approach. He mentioned the dependence of GPS on having a clear view of satellites, and raised the question if coverage can be improved.
Russell explained how latitude and longitude can be transported via CAMA trunking or ISDN lines. He said the increased amount of data may add to the existing call set up time of four to six seconds. He outlined the status of selective routers for carrying enhanced multifrequency data, including CML, ECS-1000, DMS-100, #5ESS and the Rockwell SCX.
911 Locating and Privacy
The colliding worlds of privacy, wireless 911 location and the FBI were discussed in a talk by Cassidy Segal, a public policy lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Her talk focused mostly on how the FBI has requested more capabilities under the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement (CALEA) legislation passed by Congress in 1994.
Segal explained that CALEA was intended only to maintain the status quo on law enforcement surveillance capabilities. That is, it extended the existing, 1968 Title 3 eavesdropping privileges for wired communications to the emerging world of wireless communications. It was never intended to expand the authority of law enforcement to allow more eavesdropping.
Segal said that, nonetheless, the FBI has asked Congress to expand its eavesdropping authority, including the ability to monitor the location of wireless callers. "We urge caution," Segal said, when the issue of expanding the FBI's authority is discussed. She said that so far, the FCC has not "gold plated their wishes." According to Segal, "Just because there is Enhanced 911 location services doesn't mean the FBI should have it."
Segal said the FBI believes that their request to obtain wireless phone location information is not an expansion of authority. But, she argued, that wired phone surveillance gives the caller's location only as a by-product of the phone number, not as the primary piece of information being sought.
Segal also argued that, "Wireless location may reveal confidential information that law enforcement has no right to have." She said that it's very likely that privacy groups would litigate if the FCC approves law enforcement access to location information. As for private uses of the data, such as so-called concierge services, Segal said it's a private business transaction, and isn't a constitutional issue.
Segal concluded that the Congress put the FCC "in a very uncomfortable position" with its 1996 legislation. She admitted that it's a complex issue, and that, "We've all been pulling our hair out trying to come up with a balance." But she hoped that the issues would be addressed by Congress and resolved.