Select Page

One year past the deadline and it just isn’t working.

-Ian.

———– http://www.wirelessweek.com/ index.asp?layout=story&articleIdÊ243964&stt1 E911 Moving Along, But Not Very Quickly By Mark Rockwell September 16, 2002 Wireless Week © 2002, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

WASHINGTON—Carriers’ progress on enhanced 911 Phase II deployment is moving along, but probably not as quickly as the FCC would like.

That’s the consensus among industry analysts and E911 vendors as they await a widely anticipated report on the progress of E911 installation from the FCC. The agency’s office of engineering and technology is expected to release the report within a couple of weeks.

Actual availability of E911 Phase II equipment was a problem in the past, hampering and slowing some installations. Now equipment needed to implement Phase II is beginning to reach carriers, but it still isn’t fast enough to satisfy FCC objectives, says Rudy Baca, vice president and global strategist at the Precursor Group, a Washington D.C.-based telecommunications investment research company.

“The implementation of E911 Phase II is going slower than the FCC would like, but it’s better than was feared,” he says.

For their part, vendors say they’re encouraged. “It’s starting to take off,” says Mike Amarosa, vice president of public affairs at TruePosition, a provider of location-based technology, an integral part of Phase II.

That sentiment is shared at rival Grayson Wireless, a division of Allen Telecom that is involved in a patent dispute with TruePosition. “We’ve been installing systems for some time,” says George Marble, vice president of marketing at Grayson.

In fact, some of the systems are advancing well. Cingular Wireless is using TruePosition’s location-based systems in Harris County, Texas. The vendor says its position determining system has been installed on 70 cell sites across 22 square miles of the county near Houston. It contends the installation meets, or exceeds, the FCC’s standards.

Grayson has deployed location-based systems for Triton PCS, Hickory Tech and other smaller, regional wireless providers, as well as larger carriers such as AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless. “We’ve now installed about 1,000 systems on about 1,500 base stations,” Marble says.

“We’re not running into any big issues after installing systems,” he adds. “We know what to expect” in most situations.

FCC spokeswoman Meribeth McCarrick says she couldn’t pinpoint the exact date of the E911 progress report’s release, saying it would happen sometime this fall. The report will include recommendations on how to improve installation and implementation of such systems.

———–