911 for the 21st Century

No matter how smart your phone may be, your Mayday call likely relies on an ancient 2400- baud modem to tell emergency responders what they most need to know your location. And as phone technology advances, the problem is getting worse. · An elementary school in Illinois found this out the hard way when a school official called 911 to report that two kindergartners had wandered off. The call went to an emergency communications center in Canada, delaying the response by several minutes. The children were eventually found, but the delay could have made a deadly difference in other circumstances. · Engineers have installed a patchwork of updates to try to keep pace with calling technology, but they´ve reached their limit. It´s time to rebuild the system from the ground up-and that´s exactly what´s happening in the United States and in many other places around the world. The author discusses how to make emergency services work with wireless and Internet distress calls.