Speaker 1: The new technology that's helping nine to one one call
Speaker 1: centers get a better idea of exactly where you're calling from.
Speaker 1: What's going on. I'm rich Demiro. This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Joining me today is Jeff Robertson.
Speaker 2: He works for Rapid SOS. Jeff, thanks so much for
Speaker 2: joining me.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: So I saw this.
Speaker 1: Announcement from both Apple and iOS twelve that they're building
Speaker 1: in this new technology, and then also Google came out
Speaker 1: a couple weeks later saying kind of similar stuff. So
Speaker 1: when you call nine one one today, in many cases,
Speaker 1: how are they getting our current location from a cell phone?
Speaker 3: Currently? The way they use it, if you remember elgebra class,
Speaker 3: they sort of get three towers and they try to
Speaker 3: look at the speed of the signal to you. The
Speaker 3: challenge with getting a location off that is, if you're
Speaker 3: in a building where sixty five percent of all wireless
Speaker 3: calls people are calling from inside a building, makes it
Speaker 3: tough to put an accurate location. So the screen of
Speaker 3: the dispatcher has a big circle sort of you maybe
Speaker 3: somewhere in this could be one hundred yard, two hundred yard,
Speaker 3: or sometimes even a mile radius that they have to
Speaker 3: try to find you or talk you through to describe
Speaker 3: where you are.
Speaker 2: And with your technology. What happens with rapid SOS.
Speaker 3: We have worked with both the operating systems as you mentioned,
Speaker 3: Apple's iOS twelve and Android, So when you dial nine
Speaker 3: one one and hit send, it sends a data payload
Speaker 3: to us, which we passed the clearing to the dispatcher,
Speaker 3: so they see exactly where you are and in some
Speaker 3: cases it'll even show what room you are and in
Speaker 3: the building.
Speaker 1: We're actually recording this year at one of LAPD's dispatch
Speaker 1: centers for nine one one, and I saw the map
Speaker 1: of kind of what a cell phone looks like without
Speaker 1: the rapid SOS information versus what you guys offer, and
Speaker 1: it's pretty different. I mean, yours is basically pinpointing the
Speaker 1: location of the person versus the other one is just
Speaker 1: kind of a guestimate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the older method of trying to locate a
Speaker 3: device was before smartphones were around. There is many different
Speaker 3: sensors in both the Google devices and Android as well
Speaker 3: Apple everything from they do an assisted GPS GPS, they
Speaker 3: have pedometers which help with location. They have Wi Fi
Speaker 3: sensors like the terminore and Bluetooth beacons, just to name
Speaker 3: a few of the sensors they use all to improve
Speaker 3: that location.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I know there's a whole side of privacy to all
Speaker 1: this stuff, but when you're talking about nine one one
Speaker 1: in particular, this is really valuable in saving lives.
Speaker 3: Correct, And our rapid SUS technology only works when you
Speaker 3: actually dial nine one one. Is when it activates and
Speaker 3: sends that location. No one at the center can actually
Speaker 3: key in your number and find out where that device
Speaker 3: is without you actually dialing nine one one. But you're
Speaker 3: absolutely right.
Speaker 2: So tell me what the change is.
Speaker 1: So because Apple made this announcement in Google, you're actually
Speaker 1: embedding your software at.
Speaker 2: The OS level.
Speaker 3: Correct. We did some early trials. Rapid SS has been
Speaker 3: around for just shy a six years. Our original idea
Speaker 3: was to have an app running in the background, but
Speaker 3: we just found with people having to load that app
Speaker 3: if they got a new phone where they remember to
Speaker 3: download it again. The public has been very well trained
Speaker 3: in the last fifty years of now I want to
Speaker 3: just dial now on one and we have always been
Speaker 3: a proponent of not having the user have to do
Speaker 3: anything in that time of need. So we worked very
Speaker 3: closely with both Apple and Google, and they agreed to
Speaker 3: have our technology right embedded in the operating system so
Speaker 3: that when you're in that moment of need, you don't
Speaker 3: have to remember to push a button, an app or
Speaker 3: anything else. That location gets sent to the dispatcher when
Speaker 3: you need help.
Speaker 2: And that's a pretty big get for your company.
Speaker 3: It is. We worked very hard on working with them
Speaker 3: and also educating them what it was like in the
Speaker 3: front lines of public safety. We find a lot of
Speaker 3: technology companies don't know what goes on behind the scenes
Speaker 3: in many cases of how a nine to one calls taken,
Speaker 3: how the technology works, or even the technology and the
Speaker 3: cruiser as you're on your way to an incident or
Speaker 3: a pumper truck for that matter. So there's a lot
Speaker 3: of technology that happens in the way and we're trying
Speaker 3: to improve that to speed up that response.
Speaker 1: Now, I'll be honest, I mean, I just kind of
Speaker 1: assumed that when you called from a cell phone it
Speaker 1: gave a pretty good idea of your location.
Speaker 2: Did landlines give a better idea because it was linked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Back when I was on the job, we would
Speaker 3: get nine to one callers. In the early days of
Speaker 3: cell phones, the bag phones. If you remember when they
Speaker 3: were on one of those devices, nay dial nine one.
Speaker 3: A lot of times we would tell them to pull
Speaker 3: over a payphone pick it up in dial nine one
Speaker 3: so we could find out where they are because that's linked,
Speaker 3: that's a physical address, and that line had a cable
Speaker 3: that went all the way back to the phone company.
Speaker 3: They knew exactly where it was, so it's very different.
Speaker 1: How do I know if this is on my device?
Speaker 1: How do I have to activate it? Do I have
Speaker 1: to do anything?
Speaker 2: In particular?
Speaker 3: You just have to make sure you're on iOS twelve
Speaker 3: or better from Apple and the Android is anything foreign above,
Speaker 3: which is most phones today. Android is supported, so nothing
Speaker 3: you should have to do.
Speaker 1: So we saw this demo here at this location for
Speaker 1: Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Does every municipality have this in place right now?
Speaker 3: No, your question. There are roughly about six three hundred
Speaker 3: nine one centers in America. We now cover fifteen just
Speaker 3: over fifteen hundred of them, which is still quite an accomplishment,
Speaker 3: but we've got a lot more to go. We're trying
Speaker 3: to educate the nine to one community that it's easy,
Speaker 3: it's free, and then we can get them access to
Speaker 3: these locations. When people down now on one. So we're
Speaker 3: working very hard and thanks to you getting the word
Speaker 3: out to do this.
Speaker 1: And you said free, So I mean the technology that
Speaker 1: you're offering these people, these call centers is.
Speaker 3: Free absolutely to public safety. It's it's a there's no charge.
Speaker 2: And so tell me about the bigger idea of this company.
Speaker 1: Obviously you're a location company. What can we see in
Speaker 1: the future. Kind of paint that picture for me of
Speaker 1: where this can all go.
Speaker 3: Well, our mission is to improve emergency response. Now we've
Speaker 3: got all these new technologies coming out of IoT devices,
Speaker 3: everything from you know, many people are familiar with telematics
Speaker 3: in their car when they if they were in an
Speaker 3: axe and airbags are deployed, you know, it goes to
Speaker 3: a call center. Well, now that data, that information could
Speaker 3: go straight to the disc screen immediately to start emergency
Speaker 3: personnel rolling to your So getting that information, there's always
Speaker 3: been a disconnect in the nine to one network because
Speaker 3: it was fifty years old. Getting data was very hard.
Speaker 3: We can get voice to someone, but data was the art.
Speaker 3: So now those that information will come to us and
Speaker 3: we will pass that to the relevant dispatcher on a response.
Speaker 2: So we have that are we there yet you have
Speaker 2: that right now.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're very close to having that, but we
Speaker 3: our technology fully supports that. We're in the middle of
Speaker 3: rolling it. Location was the most important thing when we
Speaker 3: talk to public safety to solve but these other things
Speaker 3: are very important. You're seeing these doorbell video cameras, You're
Speaker 3: seeing smoke detectors now that connect to your WiFi. All
Speaker 3: those can now send valuable information to a first responder
Speaker 3: to have a better outcome.
Speaker 1: So the reason I got a video camera in my
Speaker 1: house was because I had just flown to New Jersey.
Speaker 1: I get a text on my phone or a call
Speaker 1: that hey, your fire alarm is going off at your house.
Speaker 2: Now, my smoke alarm.
Speaker 1: Was connected to the alarm system, but I said, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I can't look inside my house to know
Speaker 1: if it's actually on fire. And so it wasn't, thankfully,
Speaker 1: but the police were outside the fire everyone and I
Speaker 1: ended up getting a camera so next time I can
Speaker 1: look in.
Speaker 2: So you're saying in the future.
Speaker 1: When my alarm goes off, maybe it activates a camera
Speaker 1: that someone can actually at the dispatch center check in
Speaker 1: and see if you.
Speaker 3: Authorize them to do that during that time of need yes,
Speaker 3: they could. That's in theory. They can do that. Or
Speaker 3: they may be able to see who's on your front
Speaker 3: porch from your your doorbell camera. If there's someone that's
Speaker 3: not supposed to be there, and you authorize that camera feed,
Speaker 3: they could see that. In the first responder that comes
Speaker 3: would also have that video to look for a suspect.
Speaker 1: Now, I like how you have all these you know,
Speaker 1: if you authorize, I get it. There's so many it's
Speaker 1: like a privacy nightmare for some people. But for me
Speaker 1: and you, you kind of see the benefit of all
Speaker 1: these things working together.
Speaker 3: And it's an opt in approach. Nine one one has
Speaker 3: always sent your location when you had a landline phone.
Speaker 3: My grandmother's phone when she del now one, it's sent
Speaker 3: the address to public safety. So now the only thing
Speaker 3: is the wireless device is going to do the same thing.
Speaker 3: So we had nothing's changed really there when we had
Speaker 3: these other devices. It's got to be an opt in
Speaker 3: where you say, hey, listen, I'm going to my fire
Speaker 3: alarms going off. I'm worried. I'm okay with them taking
Speaker 3: a look at that camera.
Speaker 1: And I'm just painting a picture of the future. Let's
Speaker 1: say I drive a Tesla and I get to an accident.
Speaker 1: My phone is connected to that Tesla, so it's already
Speaker 1: gathered that data that says, hey, I'm connected to a Tesla.
Speaker 1: That tesla talks to my phone says, hey, the airbag
Speaker 1: just went off. This is an electric vehicle. Here's I
Speaker 1: don't know how much fuel it has in it, how
Speaker 1: much electricity is left location of that device. You know,
Speaker 1: whatever triggered inside that car could all theoretically be passed along.
Speaker 2: To the people that are helping me.
Speaker 3: And you may not have even called nine to one,
Speaker 3: and they may have that information immediately when you're when
Speaker 3: you've gotten that accident, that information could be at the
Speaker 3: dispatcher's screen. They could already be rolling personnel to help you.
Speaker 1: Wow, and Los Angeles doing this one of the cities
Speaker 1: at the forefront. Obviously, since we're here, you'd like to
Speaker 1: see this in every city.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, we'd like to have this rule because it's free
Speaker 3: of charge and it's fairly easy to roll out. We
Speaker 3: just need to educate the public safety community to go forward.
Speaker 1: Throught more information on wrapping sos, you can go to
Speaker 1: the website. Richon tech dot TV Jeff Robertson with Rabid SOS.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: Thank you appreciate that I have more in the show
Speaker 1: notes as well, so you can check them for more details.
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Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you real
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