By Kimberly Stauffer
The Houston Chronicle
Copyright 2007 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
HOUSTON, Texas — As cell phones fast replace residential and business landlines in Montgomery County, emergency dispatch personnel are changing the way they handle and respond to emergency calls.
With almost 60 percent of all 911 calls originating from cell phones, emergency dispatchers face the challenges of static, dropped calls and even cloud cover.
Unlike calls from landlines, if a caller cannot give dispatchers their address and information, tracking them down via cell phone becomes an investigation itself.
Communications Lt. David Park of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department said while many of the newer cell phones are enabled with Global Positioning Systems, the information can be vague, only giving law enforcement a general area.
“We have to be able to talk to them,” he said. “If we receive a call from a cell phone caller and lose that call, we keep trying to call the caller back. We either speak with the caller eventually or leave a message on their phone.”
Tracking calls
An agreement between cell phone providers and the Federal Communications Commission requires wireless carriers to supply locating information and technology.
Bob Gunter, executive director of the sheriff’s department, said with the carriers’ help they can locate an individual about 80 percent of the time. With minimal cloud cover and good reception, dispatch can often track callers to within 125 feet.
Gunter said in the Greater Houston area only Galveston, Harris and Montgomery counties have the technology, which requires law enforcement to pay “a big chunk of change” to have access to resident and business information.
For cell phones without GPS technology, law enforcement relies on geometry.
“The carriers that do not have a chip in their telephone, they use what we call triangulation,” Gunter said. “Most of the time when you make a 911 call, two or three towers are tracking you. For 911, when you call those towers send information, which is calculated and we triangulate your location out there.”
The method gives dispatch a general proximity of 100 to 2,000 feet of the caller’s location.
“At least this tells us that in this area somebody is calling for help,” Gunter said. “It gives us a point on the map to at least go look. In Montgomery County we’re pretty good. We have good cell phone coverage and triangulation.”
While the coverage along the Interstate 45 corridor is good, the rural areas of the county’s eastern and western borders are more difficult to cover. Gunter said the signals are often “flaky” as there are fewer towers in rural America.
“It takes a lot of towers to make cell phones work,” he said.
When dispatch receives a 911 call, information about where the call is coming from pops up on their screen within 15 to 20 seconds with a press of a button.
“If they (dispatch) don’t get good information from the caller, we use this to get the location information,” Gunter said. “That’s phase-two data. Phase one is the phone number and information from the person calling. It’s taken a few years to get it all done.”
Call volume increases
The proliferation of cell phones causes traffic jams on the dispatch phone lines as well as the road. When a major accident occurs, Gunter said the sheriff’s department receives dozens of calls.
"(Cell phones) have made it much easier, but as we put all these devices out there, the load has become heavier,” he said. “If we could only get one or two people to call us about a major accident on Interstate 45 rather than 45 people. I want the ones that have information; we want that call fast. But all the other calls slow us down. We don’t know how to educate the public. It’s a Catch-22.”
In the month of April, Gunter said the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department reported receiving 11,929 calls with another 18,147 calls on the non-emergency line.
The city of Conroe received 3,097 emergency calls and the Montgomery County Hospital District handled 2,483 calls for ambulances and paramedics. The Woodlands Fire Department reported 290 calls with firetrucks sent to the scene.
If cell phone calls are replacing landlines as the traditional way to call for emergency help, the next generation technology will bring a new wave of communication tools.
New technology
Gunter said in the subsequent one to three years the sheriff’s department will begin implementing new technology allowing the public to contact emergency services from anywhere and anything.
“I do not have the technology today, nor does it exist today, but the industry, the National Emergency Number Association, is working with all the providers in development of next generation standards,” Gunter said. “What that means is any device anywhere, whether it’s an OnStar vehicle-equipped truck, laptop somebody is sitting with in a coffee shop or a cell phone sending me a text message, and all the other devices never dreamed up yet, are all going to be IP-based Internet-type technology that is going to be the next generation.”
For example, Gunter said, if someone witnesses a shooting and uses a cell phone or camera to snap a picture of the crime, they can upload it and send it to dispatch along with calling 911.
“We are starting planning in the next two years to purchase that kind of network database,” Gunter said. “We know it’s coming; areas of the country are testing it.”
Staying connected
While the information age has given law enforcement and emergency services providers better access to the public, it’s also creating barriers. Lt. Dan Norris of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department said pocketed cell phones sometimes dial 911, instigating a needless investigation into an accidental call.
Many apartment renters are forgoing traditional landlines in favor of relying solely on cell phones, which means residents must keep their phones charged and receive a signal to call for help.
The newest form of household communication is Voice over Internet Protocol, or VOIP. Gunter said homeowners are unplugging phones and rerouting calls through the World Wide Web.
“It’s the newest in technology to compete against the telephone companies,” he said. “When you make that 911 call, you’re using the Internet and not a regular telephone. The bad part about all of that is if you lose power to your house, you can’t call anybody, not even 911.”
Gunter said he encourages all residents to keep at least one phone line that is directly connected in case of emergencies.
911 TECHNOLOGY
Montgomery County residents have alternatives to traditional landline telephones to contact emergency services. The next generation of communication technology will allow callers to use cell phone cameras, laptop computers and OnStar vehicle communication. Here’s a sampling of some of those services:
Service providers like AT&T and Vonage sell packages including VOIP, Voice over Internet Protocol, that routes phone calls through the Internet.
These devices’ new tricks allow anyone anywhere to call for help, even sending text and picture messages from computers and phones. But without a landline phone, these devices are harder to track if the caller cannot give useful information, such as an address or name.