E911 and the Importance of High-Accuracy Location-Based Services

TMC net
May 9th, 2008

E911, or the ability for emergency responders to quickly locate 911 dialers calling from their cell phones, has become vital today, especially with the U.S. Federal Government mandating automatic location identification to determine the geographic location of a cellular phone.  

Location Based Services (LBS) answer to this need while also providing carriers with a way to differentiate their mobile service offerings and gain revenue to offset the billions of dollars required to implement the mandate.  

With the rising number of wireless subscribers in the U.S., LBS is increasing in popularity for the mature market by providing users with the ability to personalize their mobile service based on their location. For emergency responders, GPS tracking makes it fast and easy to locate a caller.  

A Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) white paper, "E911 & LBS: Addressing the New Location Accuracy Gap," notes that annual U.S. LBS revenues will reach $3.5 billion by 2013. This increase also pushes for higher accuracy from the network to support high-revenue services like navigation, fleet management, friend/family finder, mobile social networking and local search.  

However, according to reports, when it comes to E911 and LBS, there is no single technology that meets the location accuracy needs across all calling environments.  

"One of the worst things a carrier can do is hype LBS and then not deliver an adequate level of service to its customers," said Brent Iadarola, Research Director, Mobile & Wireless Communications Practice, Frost & Sullivan. "Customer dissatisfaction can be avoided by deploying a location technology that directly addresses the largest markets and seamlessly integrates complementary technologies to provide the highest possible accuracy across all environments."  

And while A-GPS has been used with LBS, the problem remains that carriers must "fall back on Cell ID or similar network technologies to compensate for coverage gaps, which include indoor environments and dense urban settings."

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