by The Sage
Dear Sage,
Are there really going to be any changes in the way things operate now that
Clinton signed S.B. 800?
Skeptical
Dear S.,
I hear'ya, honey! Signing legislation is one thing, but gettin' something
to really happen is another. The "official" designation of 911
probably won't save anyone's life, and the other provisions, by themselves,
won't get you to a hospital sooner. But, the law does pave the way for some
other moves to improve highway medical care and bring Phase I and II to
PSAPs sooner. I think the bunch of people asked by 9-1-1 Magazine about
the impact of the law had a good overview: some said, "little direct
impact" and "impact will be minor." Others said it was "significant"
and would spur carriers to implement wireless 911 faster. Take your pick.
Sage
Everyone has some vision of the future-even me! And everyone's welcome to their opinion. It's just when someone starts describing this utopian world of integrated technology systems zipping data, voice, video, graphics, etc., with dispatchers receiving and dispatching incidents with automatic language translation, extracting prior criminal histories, blah, blah, blah. So William Weaver of Nortel Networks described in Public Safety Communications magazine in an article about "knowledge is an asset." Hate to harp, but dispatchers are just dispatchers. We don't create computer or knowledge systems. We just buy them. When is someone going to provide the integration, the links, the user interface to make all these futuristic systems come true?
Dear Sage,
You've talked about how you handle 911 hang-ups, but what about wireless
911 calls where they persons hangs up? Am I right that 911 calls could originate
over a network that the caller isn't subscribed to?
Dialed Out
Dear D.O.,
If I get your drift, you're saying a person dials 911, her subscribed carrier's
signal is too weak, so the strongest signal carrier delivers the callnow,
since the caller is out of range, what happens to a callback? Hm-m-myou
got me stumped on that one. I think the answer is: you try calling back
immediately, and then within 15 minutes later. Do you keep trying after
that, or track down the subscriber's home address to have an officer go
by there? Boy, I've got no clue on that one!
Sage
I made a remark about old equipment being used by the Indiana State Police. Now I have info from a reliable source who says the ISP gear is ancient. In fact, you know that ISP museum of old cars, motorcycles and other stuff? Well, one post had a console so old that when it went pfttt, they took parts off the museum's exhibit console! They called it "repair by cannibalism."
Dear Sage,
I've been reading about wireless carriers giving away phones to schools,
women's groups and others so they can dial 911. My comm center is already
getting tons of wireless 911 calls, and don't really need to start getting
"emergencies" from all these other people. What do you think?
Overloaded
Dear O.,
I wonder if PSAPs, who already say they're swamped with wireless 911 calls,
will be capable of handling the additional calls that these phones can make-only
to 911! This could be even worse if these phones are a teacher's only mode
of communications while in the classroom-talk about non-emergencies. And
what about routing these school callsshould they go to the county, the city,
the school district police. Yikes!
Sage
I have more on telematics-it's an artificial term that is formed out of the words telecommunications and informatik, a German term for computer science, and implies the growing together of these two research and application areas. I have no idea how it came to mean location technology for consumers. Thanks to the guys and gals at the University of Lübeck for explaining all this.
I have the utmost respect and admiration for the Mount Hull (Wash.) fire department, whose members reportedly use CB radio for emergency notifications and responses, mostly because wireless phone coverage is so poor, and wireline telephone service is virtually existent. Hey, talk about your 24 MHz being needed! These guys would get by with just 12.5 KHz.
Quote of the Y2K hysteria: by FCC Commissioner Michael Powell, who recommended that citizens jot down the 7-digit number for their public safety agency. "There was a way to call the police, to call ambulance services, long before 911." As for telephone system overload on Jan. 1, he added, This is a basic network congestion issue that we see every Mother's Day. This is Mother's Day on Viagra."