Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Industry debates telematics role in E911 service

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 17:13:05 -0500

Industry debates telematics role in E911 service
By HEATHER FORSGREN WEAVER

January 06, 2003

WASHINGTON-Even as the Federal Communications Commission grapples with the continuing
implementation of wireless
enhanced 911 services, a new 911 challenge is gearing up: what to do about telematics?

On one side is a noted public-safety advocate who would like the FCC to get ahead of the
problem and make some rules
he believes will help accident victims more efficiently.

"This is where telematics service providers can add value to the solution," said John
Melcher, president of the National
Emergency Numbering Association.

On the other side are telematics companies and their supporters who believe if it isn't
broke, don't fix it. "There should
be caution because here you have an industry doing the right thing with no government
mandate contrasted with an
industry that does have a government mandate and is still (in the process of) deploying
E911," said Christopher McLean,
counsel to the Communications for Coordinated Assistance and Response to Emergencies
(ComCare) Alliance.

The FCC has put its toe in the telematics waters.

Last month the FCC sought comment on what role, if any, telematics has in relation to E911
service. This could become a
big issue since it is estimated that 40 percent of vehicles sold by the 2008-model year
will include telematics equipment.

Today when telematics subscribers have an emergency or are in an accident that causes the
airbag to deploy, the
telematics service center is called. Once the telematics service operator screens the call
to determine the type and
extent of the emergency-in an airbag deployment, known as automatic crash notification,
this is done by asking the
victim the extent of the injuries-the geographically appropriate public-safety answering
point is contacted by the
telematics service operator dialing a 10-digit number. If the PSAP requests it, the
telematics service center can
conference in the victim.

Melcher would prefer that whenever the telematics service center receives an ACN or
emergency call, the technology
calls the 911 trunk, rather than the 10-digit number.

But routing the call to 911 can be troublesome because often those lines are overworked.

"Connecting to a 10-digit number is something that the PSAPs have asked us, and
home-security companies, to do in
the past and they continue to give us the numbers we are to connect to. We have always
assumed PSAPs, at least
today, prefer us coming in on 10-digit lines because of the overburdened 911 trunks that
we keep hearing about," said
Gary Wallace, vice president of external affairs for ATX Technologies.

Wallace said that less than 1 percent of the emergency calls ATX receives get forwarded
onto a PSAP, only 60 percent of
the ACN calls get forwarded on and only 1 percent of the cars on the road today are
equipped with telematics. "It seems
that it is premature," he added.

OnStar Corp. is developing additional ACN information beyond airbag deployment to be
transmitted to the telematics
service center. This information should be available in some vehicles in the 2004-model
year, said Bill Ball, vice president
of public policy for OnStar. Melcher would like this information transmitted to the PSAP
so that the PSAP call-taker has the
same information as the telematics service provider. While Ball said this is not available
today, he did not discount it for
the future.

While NENA has worked closely with the Association of Public-safety Communications
Officials on 911-implementation
issues, APCO is not in favor of Melcher's efforts.

"APCO is not in favor of requiring direct connect from ACN devices directly to PSAPs
through legislative/regulatory
mandates," reads a recently passed APCO board statement.

OnStar has added another wrinkle to the E911/telematics issue. Last month, OnStar asked
the FCC to declare that its
personal calling feature is not a handset and therefore not subject to E911 Phase II
handset location implementation
guidelines.

The General Motors Corp. subsidiary is in the process of developing CDMA telematics before
the analog sunset kicks in.
This process has become quite complicated, said Ball, noting that unlike the mobile-phone
industry, which had developed
several generations of digital service before implementing location information, OnStar is
trying to do it all at once.

"It seems to us that since personal calling is an ancillary service, the first priority is
to get digital telematics launched. To
the extent that we would have to delay launching digital telematics because we didn't have
[E911 capabilities] would
have the impact of putting more analog cars out on the road but analog is going away in
five years. We asked the FCC
to take note of the technological complexity of trying to do both of these issues at the
same time," said Ball, noting that
OnStar hopes to offer digital telematics in the 2004-model year.

OnStar uses various carriers for its personal-calling feature that will require it to
develop Phase II capabilities to match
each carrier's system.

In addition, OnStar is concerned the carriers will be burdened when the 2005 deadline
requiring 95 percent of all
handsets be Phase II-compliant arrives. OnStar believes that since cars do not turnover as
rapidly as handsets that
carriers could be stuck with more than 5 percent of analog telematics units counted as
handsets, thus defeating the
benefits of the 95 percent rule.

The FCC has requested comment on the OnStar petition. Comments are due Jan. 24 with
replies due Feb. 7.

http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?newsId=6592

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/