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911 Texting Won’t Work – Yet
By Bill Leukhardt, Hartford Courant, 11/19/09
NVRC Note: There is a non-captioned video of a broadcast on this at http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-911texting1119.artnov19,0,2356078.story
Text messaging is perfect for casual chatting, but right now it’s useless for contacting 911 and will remain so for years, state officials and telecommunication experts testified Wednesday.
“Currently, the ability to text 911 does not exist,” Marissa Mitrovich of Verizon Wireless told the state legislature’s public safety committee at an informational hearing on using text messages to get police, fire and other emergency assistance. “It will take many years.”
The millions of text messages sent daily by cellphone users are handled equally by carriers, so a 911 message could sit for hours before it is delivered. Even then, it’s worthless, as dispatch centers don’t have the technical capacity to receive it, lawmakers heard.
No one was willing to predict how long it may take state and federal agencies and the national telecommunication industry to resolve the equipment, security and technical roadblocks to 911 texting.
Until then, it’s still best to call and talk directly to a dispatcher, said John Danaher, the state’s public safety commissioner. A call gives the 911 center the location and callback number of the telephone used and allows the dispatcher to ask questions and get more information, he said.
The hearing was triggered, in part, by the violent death of Alice Morrin, the Vernon woman who was shot to death by her estranged husband, James Morrin, on June 28. Police said Alice Morrin spent the last moments of her life frantically sending text messages to a friend seeking help. James Morrin killed her as police showed up at their house, then committed suicide.
“When I saw the media reports on that incident in Vernon, it touched me,” said Rep. Stephen Dargan, D-West Haven, the committee co-chair, said after the meeting. “I’m not familiar with texting. So I thought we could have an informational meeting and learn more about it and 911.”
Peter White, director of public policy for AT&T, said 911 texting will be possible when the nation’s emergency dispatch system is upgraded from copper-based land lines to a fiber-optic-based system capable of receiving digital information, such as texting and videos.
“That’s what’s coming sometime in the future,” he said. “Until then, if you need help, don’t go to Facebook. Don’t Twitter. Don’t send a text message. Call and talk.”
Verizon has programmed its system to discourage customers from 911 texting. When its equipment detects a 911 message, it gives the sender an error message, saying that there is no text service to 911 and that the person should “please make a voice call to 911,” Mitrovich said.
At the hearing, Danaher discussed an ambitious state project started three years ago to create a fiber-optic system linking all 107 emergency call centers, hundreds of police, fire and other first-responder stations, the judicial system and medical facilities.
The project, which will cost $58 million over 10 years, is financed by the 47-cent monthly charge paid by land-line phone subscribers to support a new emergency call system.
The first few years of the project were spent planning, but now work has begun installing fiber-optic cable in some Hartford-area towns. All the cable should be installed by 2011 and the system ready to link all the facilities in a secure, digital network that will make sharing information much easier, Danaher said.
The new system also will be able to receive text messages, once national wireless networks and the federal government figure out how to quickly and securely deliver 911 texts to emergency centers. But for a while, the state will be ahead of the curve.
“All we can do is take care of our end of the system,” Danaher said. “We’ll be ready when 911 texting can be used.”
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
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