“Next Gen 911″ system will accept SMS text messages
November 23, 2010 in Blog, Mobile Industry News by Nicholas
If you live in Blackhawk, Iowa and find yourself in the midst of an emergency, you now have an alternative to calling 911. You can send a text message instead.
The FCC announced today that it is considering overhauling the 911 system, a project dubbed “NG 9-1-1 What’s Next” – or Next Gen 9-1-1 – to accept not only text messages, but video and photos, too. Blackhawk, Iowa seems to be the first pilot location in this process.
In a press release quoted by Wired magazine, the FCC cites scenarios surrounding the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007:
“During the 2007 Virginia Tech campus shooting, students and witnesses desperately tried to send texts to 9-1-1 that local dispatchers never received. If these messages had gone through, first responders may have arrived on the scene faster with firsthand intelligence about the life-threatening situation that was unfolding.”
Other use-cases come immediately to mind as well, such as emergencies involving deaf people or someone with a speech impediment that may make it hard to communicate with their voice, among many others.
But don’t go texting 9-1-1 in an emergency just yet. As with anything at this scale, lots of testing is involved, and according to the NG 9-1-1 What’s Next Project description (pdf) published at 911.gov, we’ll still be at the whitepaper stage as of February of 2011, and presumably roll out will be phased over the next year or more.
For details, up-to-date information, and to share your input on the project, bookmark this Transporation Safety Advancement Group page on the NG 9-1-1 What’s Next Project.
2 Comments to ““Next Gen 911″ system will accept SMS text messages”
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November 24, 2010 at 8:38 am
The one reservation I have about this is location. As it stands now, when you call 911 from a landline, they know where you are at, even cell phone calls can be traced to the closest tower the call was made from.
Text message though dont have this info, do they ? It seems the system would be opened up to pranksters, like yourself, to game the process, sending txt msgs for emergencies that are not real
November 24, 2010 at 9:57 am
Yep, SMS has location data. It’s explicitly opt-in, but presumably would not be in the case of the 9-1-1 system.
Why is SMS more prone to pranks than voice? Presumably, they go through the same process of verification they would over the phone. Asking for details, etc. And just like phone, they have your phone number (and thus your ID), and location – so they can prosecute as they would with a voice prank call.