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Prepaid phones hit and miss when using 911

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BY RICHARD MULLINS

THE TAMPA TRIBUNE

Published: February 20, 2009

TAMPA - Almost any new cell phone can use GPS data to pinpoint your location to the corner where you stand. Many even offer turn-by-turn directions down the street.

Call 911 on the same phone, however, and 25 percent of the time police may only know you're in an area within six miles of the nearest cellular tower.

Low-cost, prepaid phones that many people buy expressly for emergency use are among the worst at locating callers in an emergency, say area 911 officials.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are dropping their easy-to-locate home phones in favor of a cellular-only lifestyle. That's one reason more than 60 percent of calls to local 911 centers now come from cellular phones, a portion that's steadily rising.

Despite all the multimedia features of modern wireless mobile phones and the hundreds of millions of dollars customers pay monthly to fund better 911 systems, police say dangerous gaps persist in the safety net that people assume cell phones provide.
Verizon Wireless and AT&T officials did not respond to questions about the topic of locating 911 callers. MetroPCS officials said a third-party contractor handles their 911 calls.

Such gaps in the system have led to a series of rare but tragic cases where police could hear a person who had called 911 during a kidnapping or slaying, but there was no information about their location. On top of glitches, bureaucracy can add to delays.

Best Case/Worst Case

In a best-case scenario, police can pinpoint a cell phone caller within a few dozen yards in a matter of seconds. The caller's latitude and longitude coordinates pop up on an operator's computer screen. This happens primarily with newer phones equipped with GPS chips. Generally, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Alltel use this method with their newest phones.

Other service providers, such as AT&T and T-Mobile, use a triangulation method among several cell phone towers to locate callers. Each method has drawbacks: GPS doesn't work well inside buildings; triangulation does better inside, but tends to be less accurate.

Sometimes the technology works wonders.

Last October, a Kernersville, N.C., woman was kidnapped and put in a car trunk. She dialed 911 on her phone, and police found her.

Other times, the system fails.

Last November, Jennifer Johnson, a 31-year-old Tampa mother, was kidnapped. She dialed 911 and got out two words - "Help me." But police say there was no location data on the call. Police later found her body in a vacant house in Lakeland. An investigation continues into the case.

In January, kidnapping victim Denise Amber Lee of Sarasota managed to call 911 while tied up in her abductor's car. Authorities logged the call but were unable to locate her in time.

Her father, Mark Lee, said, "It boggles my mind how you can have a GPS on your dashboard that tells you turn by turn how to find the local pizza shop, but they can't use that technology to find a cell phone of someone being murdered."

How Does That Happen?

Thorny technical problems stand in the way.

Sometimes, callers use phones more than a year old that aren't equipped with GPS chips. Other times, the phone can't receive GPS signals because it's in a basement, a parking garage or trunk. In those cases, a 911 operator may only see which tower is connecting the call.

In rural areas or along freeways, cellular towers can be spread out in a "string of pearls" series, meaning there may be only one tower nearby, making it harder to pinpoint a location.

Local law enforcement offices don't tally how many calls come in with partial data. But in their estimation, about one call in four lacks a precise location.

The likely culprits are older phones or obstructed callers, said Tim Lorello, chief marketing officer for TeleCommunication Systems Inc., which provides 911 locating services to MetroPCS and many other carriers.

Sometimes It's A Rocky Road

Police have backup procedures, but they take time.

In their defense, at least one cellular carrier said they can only provide location data their technology produces.

"Some calls on these handsets originate under very adverse conditions, such as indoor calls, calls in urban environments, etc.," said Kristin Wallace, a spokeswoman for Sprint. In those cases, location data can range above 200 meters.

Federal rules require a level of accuracy for finding 911 callers.

Companies that use triangulation must fix callers within 100 meters for 67 percent of calls (about the area of a football field); 300 meters for 95 percent of calls. Companies using GPS must locate them within 50 meters for 67 percent of calls; 150 meters for 95 percent of calls.

But the rules allow carriers to average call performance across many states. Federal officials want better.

"Providing enhanced 911 capability in Manhattan does not help first responders in Buffalo," said Robert Kenny, a spokesman with the Federal Communications Commission.

As of Jan. 1, 2007, prepaid phone companies had to sell handsets capable of providing location data. But they don't have to replace phones that customers bought and stored for emergencies before that date.

Prepaid phones also suffer because they may not have a customer's address attached, so police don't even have a home site to start an investigation.

On the law enforcement side, 911 centers benefit from millions of dollars in financing collected through monthly fees tacked onto phone bills. Florida collected $90 million in monthly "enhanced 911" fees from telephone customers to fund better 911 systems at law enforcement and emergency rescue centers.

The FCC is putting more pressure on cellular carriers to improve location technology, including ways to locate people within buildings or on specific floors of apartments or office towers.

Several victims' advocacy groups are starting to push the issue, appearing on TV talk shows to tell their stories.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida sponsored, and President George W. Bush signed, legislation in July to further modernize the system and study how well cellular carriers locate callers.

"This is certainly something we're looking at closely," said Christopher Day, legislative counsel for Nelson. "We plan on legislation going into next year to fill in some of these gaps."

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