PINPOINTING CELL CALLS COULD SAVE LIVES

A surprising 45 million Americans made 911 calls from their wireless telephones last year. And unless the callers were able to tell the emergency services operator where they were, the operator had no way of knowing.

That can be tragic in the case of an emergency situation. In one such case, a Florida woman died after her car sank in a canal off the Florida Turnpike in February. She dialed 911 but couldn't tell the operator where she was.

When a person punches 911 from a traditional wire-line phone, personnel at the answering center see a screen that displays the number of the caller, what street that person is on and even a map where that home is located. But cell phone numbers don't correspond to a fixed address.

The federal government wants something done so emergency services can pinpoint from where wireless calls are made just as they can when a call is made to 911 from a residential phone. So wireless carriers face an Oct. 1 government deadline to equip wireless phones with the technology that allows emergency services to home in on the signal. By so doing, not only can the location of the call be determined, but fire, police or ambulance personnel can respond faster.

Not all companies that provide wireless service are eager to add the capability to their systems, and none has done so on a widespread scale. Some are pressing regulators for more time to complete the overhaul, primarily because of the expense. A major concern is the privacy of cell-phone users. With the ability to locate cell phones, the user's whereabouts is hard to keep private. There is some fear that such technology would turn government into Big Brother.

Because of their mobility, wireless phones lend themselves to a higher percentage of emergency calls. Operators of 911 services get a lot of calls from traffic accident scenes because so many people carry wireless phones nowadays. In some highly mobilized areas of the country, 50 percent to 70 percent of all calls made to safety centers are made over wireless phones, and many of those callers are unable to identify exactly where they are.

Equipping cellular systems with the equipment to provide the location of callers would aid emergency services operators in identifying the locations of calls and would save countless lives in situations where rapid response time is of utmost importance.