Floor-Level Data for Calls to 911 Could Be Tough to Obtain

of accurate, reliable floor level records represents a fundamental challenge to vertical location in the public safety setting,” the group said: “NENA has spoken with numerous participants in the real estate and indoor location industry; all agree that tax assessment records -- the most common and widely used ‘first pass’ source of building floor levels -- are roughly only 50% reliable, and nearly always require validation via another surveying method. In many jurisdictions, tax assessment records require merely square footage numbers for taxation purposes, so floor level data fields are often either left blank or inaccurately populated.” Be “mindful of the unique challenges facing rural carriers in deploying these technologies,” the Competitive Carriers Association asked. Google said the FCC should change its rules to “promote rather than discourage delivery of floor data to public safety answering points, and also encourage the use of testing protocols that account for real-world operating conditions and concerns.” T-Mobile advised flexibility. “We should not repeat the mistakes of the past, as with the initial deployments of horizontal 911 location solutions that relied on technology developed and implemented specifically for 911,” the carrier said: “Those solutions became obsolete and resulted in public safety being left behind, even as location technologies developed for the commercial market continued to develop and improve.”