Wireless Companies Work To Make Emergency Cell Phone Calls Traceable
Source: OS Opinion
Several of the large wireless carriers say they soon will roll out emergency location technology. Sprint recently announced plans to deploy E911 technology that will enable callers to be precisely traced through global positioning system coordinates.
Plano dispatcher Karin Christian will never forget answering a 911 call one night in June and hearing a faint voice calling, "Help me, I'm bleeding." With a conventional phone, a caller's address would pop up on Ms. Christian's computer monitor, but this call was coming from a cell phone. "My screen was blank," Ms. Christian said.
The victim, who was disoriented and slipping in and out of consciousness, was unable to convey her location. "She said, 'I see trees,' in the same faint voice, then she went unconscious on me," Ms. Christian recalled.
Plano dispatcher Karin Christian led rescuers to a crash site by listening to their sirens on a disoriented victim's cell phone.
