Can My Fios Phone Transmit My Location To 911

Mobile Phone In Pocket With Emergency Number 911. Focus On Screen

We've all seen it in movies: Someone'south in an emergency state of affairs, so they dial 911 on a landline phone and run off. The police then blitz to their location. This location tracking doesn't work equally well with cell phones and VoIP services.

As we move from landline phone services to mobile phones and VoIP services, it'southward important to realize the limitations. In an emergency state of affairs, you should try to stay on the line long enough to give the operator your precise location.

How 911's Landline Location Tracking Works

Thanks to something chosen "Enhanced 9-ane-1" — used in Due north America — your location is recorded when you place a call to 911 on a landline telephone. The "public-safe answering signal" that receives the call then uses your telephone number to expect up your location in a database.

This generally works very well, and very chop-chop. As we're talking about landline phones hither, each landline phone has a specific physical address associated with it — for example, a house accost or apartment edifice address and apartment number. Even this organisation can occasionally neglect if the phone number isn't passed along properly or the information in the database isn't correct, in which case the 911 operator would accept to inquire y'all for your location.

It's e'er a practiced idea to stay on the line to provide your location and any other relevant information!

Vintage phone on green background. Hotline support concept. 3d

Cellular Phones and VoIP Services Challenge This

RELATED: How GPS Actually Works

Cellular phones aren't linked to a single physical location — they're always moving around. However, their locations tin be tracked with triangulation (comparing the relative signal strength between three cellular towers) and their GPS hardware.

VoIP services are even tougher to rails, as the calls are sent over the Internet and simply come from an IP address with no cell tower information or GPS data to rely on. Both of these new technologies pose challenges.

How Much Location Data is Sent From Your Smartphone

But some location data is still sent! In 1996, the US FCC began requiring wireless carriers to transmit location data from 911 calls placed from mobile phones on their networks. The requirements ramped up from merely sending the location of the cellular belfry the telephone call was placed on to providing the location of the calling cell telephone itself.

Cellular carriers may get this information from cellular triangulation, or the phone's GPS fleck itself. However, there'southward no recognition that they tin can become the data from the Wi-Fi information that modern phones use to track our locations even more precisely, specially indoors.

Carriers are required to provide a phone'southward location "within 50 to 300 meters." That's 164 feet to 984 feet. It goes without saying that this is fairly imprecise, particularly if you're in a dense, urban area with lots of buildings and people. And this is for outdoor locations. At that place'south too no way to pinpoint you on a specific floor of an indoor area.

So, while this is ameliorate than nothing, it's non something you want to rely on in an emergency state of affairs. The FCC wants to tighten location requirements for cell telephone 911 calls, but this won't happen until 2019 at the absolute earliest.

VoIP Location Reporting

VoIP services are even tougher to bargain with here. When y'all punch 911 from Skype or the phone call feature in Gmail, what happens? Often, cipher happens. To avert liability, many services — like Skype and Gmail — won't allow you to phone call 911 at all. They make it clear they're not a replacement for traditional phone servics in emergency situations. That's something to bear in listen — you lot can't use Skype or Gmail to place a 911 telephone call in an emergency, even though they can exist a convenient replacement for traditional phone service in many other situations.

Some VoIP services do permit yous to call 911, nonetheless — especially ones designed to supersede a traditional landline telephone. Y'all register your home address with these services and they'll provide it to a 911 service in case of emergencies. Be sure to look into whether your VoIp provider supports 911 and ensure you know how information technology volition piece of work in an emergency.

Other forms of VoIP — for example, a large office building that uses voice-over-IP features — can accept concrete address data assigned to each VoIP endpoint. It would be possible for a corporation using a VoIP network to have the exact flooring and office number of each VoIP phone phone call tracked in a location database that could exist provided to 911 services, for example.

voip phone

By the way, y'all besides probably can't contact 911 with a text message. Text-to-911 service is still very rare and only available in limited areas. This should get widespread at some point in the future, yet. For now — similar with location tracking — it's important to acquit the limitations in mind. That knowledge but might help you lot if you ever need to contact 911 in an emergency situation.

Image Credit: Rex Huang on Flickr