Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Gaps remain in cellular tracking

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 02:18:34 -0400

July 6, 2003, 12:29PM

Gaps remain in cellular tracking

Caller location technology still inadequate in
Texas' rural areas

By STEPHANIE WEINTRAUB
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

Houston area cell phone users
needing emergency help can dial
911 and get immediate results.

They don't even need to know
where they are. The Greater
Harris County 911 Emergency
Network will track them down.

But once heading southeast
toward the Texas coast or west
toward California, the effort to find 911 callers on cell phones
becomes a guessing game hinging on location and which cell
phone carrier a caller is using.

These gaps in tracking technology turned tragic May 14, when an
illegal immigrant traveling from Harlingen to Houston used a cell
phone to call police for help.

He and about 70 other people were packed in a sealed
overheated trailer, bound for Houston and what they hoped
would be prosperity in the United States.

The immigrant's call was intercepted by the Kingsville Police
Department, but police there could not determine its origins.
Ultimately, 19 illegal immigrants died near Victoria of suffocation,
dehydration and hyperthermia resulting from the trip.

The Kingsville area has limited tracking technology to find the cell
phone tower closest to where a call is made. But for some
reason, Kingsville authorities could not find the cell tower either.
The caller may have used a carrier whose technology did not
work in the area.

The trailer was a moving target at best, officials said.

Despite the tragedy near Victoria, the 911/cell phone situation has
improved in Texas, officials say.

It started in 1997 when the Texas Legislature passed a law
requiring cell phone users to pay 50 cents a month to help local
governments buy technology pinpointing a cell phone caller's
location.

Texas is doing better than the 430 counties in the rural United
States that don't even have the ability to locate a caller on a home
phone, said John Melcher, the deputy director of the Greater
Harris County 911 Emergency Network and former president of
the National Emergency Number Association.

Location tracking is more important than ever before, Melcher
said. About 50 percent of emergency calls in the Houston area
now come from cell phones.

In most areas of Texas, if the dispatcher isn't given an address,
the caller can be located to the closest cell phone tower and the
dispatcher gets a callback number.

But that closest cell phone tower could be four miles away or, in
some cases, 50 miles away.

Another roadblock in finding callers is that some cell phone
carriers and local governments have not upgraded their
technology.

The Federal Communications Commission extended to 2005 the
deadline for carriers to upgrade their technology, but there is no
law setting such a deadline for local governments.

Major metropolitan areas in Texas have moved toward acquiring
the technology anyway.

Harris County's emergency network, which includes Harris and
Fort Bend counties and parts of several others, has its cell phone
locator system up and running.

"Without the location technology, you have to really depend
almost totally on what the caller can tell you," said Laverne
Hogan, the executive director of the Harris County network.

All carriers offering service in the Houston area -- Verizon,
Cingular, AT&T Wireless, Sprint, Nextel and T Mobile -- have
location technology.

Houston is the first major metropolitan area to have all carriers
compliant, Melcher said.

For Verizon, Cingular and AT&T Wireless customers, the
upgrade was automatic because equipment was mounted on cell
towers. Sprint, Nextel and T-Mobile clients must upgrade their
phones. Most new phones are enhanced, but customers are
advised to check with their providers about capabilities.

About 20 percent of the state -- primarily less-populated rural
areas -- is behind in establishing location technology, Hogan said.

Money is partly to blame.

Regions lacking the technology are in "councils of government" --
groupings of cities, counties and special districts that combine
activities, projects and money to serve an area.

Based on population, the state redistributes the 911-surcharge
money to cities and emergency communication districts. The
Harris County network, the largest in Texas, got an $850,000
check last month, Hogan said.

But the Legislature, for the second session in a row, withheld
money from the councils of government.

Paul Mallett, the executive director of the Commission on State
Emergency Communications, said a state bank account for 911
upgrades contains more than $60 million. But the state had a $10
billion shortfall for the upcoming biennium, and budget writers
held back the $60 million to help balance the budget, said Rep.
Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, a member of the House
Appropriations Committee.

"These issues deal with life-and-death emergency situations,"
Deshotel said. "We as a Legislature have decided that, to us, it's
more important to help certify the budget."

Eight of the 13 Houston-Galveston Area Council counties are
affected by the Legislature's failure to release the money, Hogan
said.

Despite the Legislature's withholding of money, almost half of the
call centers in council of government areas are moving toward
location technology, Mallet said.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/1981642

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