More people dialing 911 on cell phones can be located

Official sees 'good news' for San Diego County

By Kathryn Balint

. Eighty percent of the U.S. population lives in areas where cell-phone callers dialing 911 can be tracked in an emergency, according to a report released yesterday by the National Emergency Number Association.

San Diego County is among the 69 percent of California counties and nearly 57 percent of counties nationwide where emergency workers can determine the location of a cell-phone caller who dials 911.

"It's good news for San Diego County," said Patrick Halley, spokesman for the National Emergency Number Association, an Arlington, Va., nonprofit dedicated to 911 emergency communications issues.

The report said that while progress has been made, 3,135 of the nation's counties, primarily in rural areas, cannot provide wireless 911 location service to their residents. NENA said lack of funding is the reason the technology has not been implemented in some areas.

While most cell-phone users who make emergency calls are capable of giving their locations, sometimes that isn't possible.

"Unlike a land line phone, where you can't move it and it's always in the same location, when you're wireless, inherently, it's not known where you are," Halley said. "Nine out of 10 times, you're going to be able to tell the dispatcher where you are. But there will be occasions where you either can't communicate or don't know where you are."

The report said cell phones have recently been credited with saving the lives of lost hikers, a lost mountain biker and a man lost in a cornfield.

Since 1993, emergency dispatchers in California have been able to tell what address a 911 call comes from, even down to the apartment unit.

The Federal Communications Commission mandated in 1996 that a similar system for cell phones be progressively rolled out, with most providing location-based 911 service by the end of 2005. But the cost of such systems has prevented some wireless carriers and emergency responders from offering the service by the deadline.

Two types of location systems are used.

Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile for instance, measure how long it takes a phone's signal to reach the closest cellular antennas to determine a 911 caller's location. Verizon and Sprint use Global Positioning Systems to locate 911 callers.