Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. Whether you're trying to order a
Speaker 1: ride or figure out what restaurants are nearby, you've probably
Speaker 1: grown accustomed to the notion that your smartphone continuously tracks
Speaker 1: your location. But you may be surprised to discover that
Speaker 1: while phone apps seem to be able to find you
Speaker 1: pretty easily, operators can have a much more difficult time
Speaker 1: pinpointing your location in an emergency when you call for
Speaker 1: help from a mobile phone. That's because wireless service providers,
Speaker 1: which are required by the Federal Communications Commission to provide
Speaker 1: callers locations to nine one systems, often are using data
Speaker 1: from different, sometimes less precise sources than your phone uses
Speaker 1: to pinpoint a location, and according to the FCC website,
Speaker 1: of nine one one calls are placed from mobile phones.
Speaker 1: In Sacramento, TV station Fox forty demonstrated the extent of
Speaker 1: the problem by having a producer stand on a street
Speaker 1: corner and make test calls to the local d N
Speaker 1: system using phones from several different wireless providers. They got
Speaker 1: disconcertingly varied results. One carrier's data was able to pinpoint
Speaker 1: the caller's location within twenty six feet that's about eight meters,
Speaker 1: while another errantly gave a location that was a mile
Speaker 1: away that's just over one and a half kilometers. And
Speaker 1: that's a scary problem because when the nine one system
Speaker 1: gets an inaccurate location, it means the police, the fire department,
Speaker 1: or the ambulance crew may lose precious time trying to
Speaker 1: find you. That's the sort of delay that has tragically
Speaker 1: proven fatal in more than one case. So why does
Speaker 1: nine one one sometimes have more difficulty finding callers than
Speaker 1: say lift? For decades, wireless providers have relied upon information
Speaker 1: from phones, pinging cellular towers, and from the Global Positioning
Speaker 1: System also known as GPS to provide location estimates for
Speaker 1: nine one one systems. You'd think that would work pretty well,
Speaker 1: but according to Evelyn Bailey, executive director of the National
Speaker 1: Association of State nine one one Administrators and former head
Speaker 1: of a once first enhanced nine one one system, those
Speaker 1: methods aren't always so reliable. She said, it depends upon
Speaker 1: the infrastructure that's available where the collar is located. Let's
Speaker 1: say you're outdoors in a place where you're close to
Speaker 1: a cell tower and the GPS signal isn't obstructed, you're
Speaker 1: probably okay. But if you're out in the mountains where
Speaker 1: cell coverage is spotty, or inside a building containing lots
Speaker 1: of metal in a densely developed urban area, it could
Speaker 1: be a lot tougher. Your phone, though, has other ways
Speaker 1: to locate you. Thanks to technological advances by mobile phone manufacturers,
Speaker 1: your device can use your proximity to Wi Fi networks
Speaker 1: and Bluetooth beacons, and even readings from the barometer that
Speaker 1: you probably didn't realize was built into your phone. That
Speaker 1: data comes from what's known as the user plane, and
Speaker 1: historically wireless carriers haven't trusted it as a location source
Speaker 1: to fulfill their regulatory obligations. But even if they did,
Speaker 1: Bailey notes that existing nine systems aren't engineered in a
Speaker 1: way that makes it easy for them to accept that
Speaker 1: data into their location stream. Fortunately, though, the wireless telecom
Speaker 1: industry and organizations representing systems have been working together for
Speaker 1: years on finding technological solutions, and as of the FCC
Speaker 1: issued new regulations that set a timetable for improving the
Speaker 1: accuracy of the location information the carriers provide. By one,
Speaker 1: they have to be able to provide a dispatchable location
Speaker 1: at least eight percent of the time a dispatchable location,
Speaker 1: meaning one that's within a hundred and sixty four feet
Speaker 1: or fifty meters of where a caller is located. Also,
Speaker 1: they have to be able to provide barometric pressure from
Speaker 1: any phone that measures it, which could make it easier
Speaker 1: to pinpoint altitude and figure out what Florina building a
Speaker 1: caller is calling from. The industry is also working on
Speaker 1: developing and testing the National Emergency Address Database. This will
Speaker 1: include the locations of WiFi hotspots, Bluetooth beacons, and other
Speaker 1: parts of the modern world electronic infrastructure. Eventually, the database
Speaker 1: will be able to accept data that consumers provide about
Speaker 1: their home WiFi networks if they choose was to provide it.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Tiger and produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Clang for iHeartMedia and How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other pointed topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.