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- 2007 /
- April-June 07 /
Standards key to emergency systems
In a bid to ensure the efficient use of emergency positioning solutions, Ericsson is urging network infrastructure improvements before products with high-accuracy positioning are rolled out.
June 28, 2007
Ola Svensson, sales manager for Location-Based Services, speaking at the first European Security and Safety Summit in Brussels, said that requirements should not be put on high-accuracy positioning before the basic infrastructure was ready. “The standard positioning technology that has been deployed thus far cannot be received or used by emergency centers in many countries throughout Europe,” he said.
“We should not repeat the mistake made in the US,” he said. Operators there have been forced to spend billions of dollars on preparing their networks for high-accuracy positioning. “The E911 phase II regulation has been in place since 2001, yet only 75 percent of the emergency centers have been modified to handle high-accuracy positioning.”
In Europe, the European Commission (EC) has been vague and legislation has done nationally, with many different interpretations and implementations resulting in disparate approaches and regulations across Europe. National telecom standards have not been developed with emergency positioning in mind: the networks do not even support positioning of all call types.
“Ideally, the infrastructure and networks should be upgraded so that they can handle all calls from all subscribers – particularly from mobile phones – even if they don’t have SIM cards or the subscriber is making the call from another operator's network,” Svensson said.
Ericsson offers several solutions and believes that issues dealing with emergency center readiness and network support for all call types should be resolved before any increased network accuracy is required.
Ericsson's portfolio includes a complete set of functions for network operators supporting any kind of emergency call. The solution enables operators to start with basic accuracy concerning location, and supports future add-on capabilities for high accuracy as a natural step.
Ericsson also provides emergency centers as a structured way of dealing with emergency calls, including emergency incidents and interventions, identity and location of the caller, as well as the logging and recording of all calls. It also keeps track of the location of fire, police and ambulance services.
“Our recommendation is that the EC should be very precise on how emergency calls should be positioned and what kind of evolution path we want to see in the future. Based on this, we can get harmonized national legislation and standardization,” Svensson said.
“The operators can specify their requirements for the industry and plan for upgrades of their networks. At the same time we can upgrade the emergency centers to incorporate support for positioning.”
He said upgrading network infrastructure would take time; operators will need 12-24 months to do this because of product specifications, purchasing, development and rollout.
“But once the infrastructure in the network and at the emergency centers is ready, we can start looking into putting requirements on positioning accuracy,” Svensson said.
