Christine Thropp
AT&T has introduced a routing technology that uses device location to speed up the transmission of 9-1-1 calls to appropriate centers across the nation in an effort to enhance public safety response.
The company said Tuesday the location-based routing has a “Locate Before Route” feature from Intrado to enable the use of GPS and hybrid information from the caller’s device to direct communications to a public safety answering point.
The new approach looks to enable pin-pointing and routing within 50 meters of the device location to give more precise information than those that use cell tower locations to direct wireless 9-1-1 calls.
Alaska, Colorado, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming are the first to have the service. The nationwide rollout is expected to wrap up by the end of June.
“Launching this industry-leading public safety solution allows us to ultimately help improve the connections and efficiency for our wireless customers by offering more accurate service when making emergency calls,” said Chris Sambar, executive vice president of AT&T Network.
