I have some gripes about 9-1-1 Emergency Dispatch, of which this first is the most serious.
The Mulnomah County, Oregon dispatchers tells me they cannot geolocate Cricket mobile phones. This was confirmed by two different dispatchers, after the first passed my - nonemergency - call to her supervisor. She told me they can't ping Cricket phones, and that if they can locate them at all, they can only do so to within 5000 feet.
Oddly, both dispatchers accept this.
They were unaware that United States Federal Communications Commission regulations require cell phones and cell towers to support signal strength triangulation. Don't all United States mobile phones have to be certified by the Federal Communications? Even if Cricket's engineers are slacking on the job, I am flummoxed that the FCC's would be.
The original cell phone technology did not provide for geolocation at all. The signal strength triangulation system designed to enable locating a phone to within a fifty foot radius, provided it was within range of three different towers. One of the dispatchers told me that the best they could ever get is one hundred feet.
I expect that part of the problem is that there are so many more mobile phones and tablet computers are in use now than was the case when the rules were first implemented; analog cell technology was still in use at the time.
Perhaps digital signaling would requires less power than analog, so it would be harder to detect a signal at all. Do GSM and CDMA digital use higher frequencies than analog? While one can pinpoint a higher frequency transmitter with greater precision, higher frequencies are loathe to go around corners.
I will call the FCC tomorrow morning.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Monday December 29 2014, @07:54AM
Why did you call 911 if it was not an emergency? Please don't tell me it was one of those calls to "test" 911. The emergency services has a non-emergency number to call in these situations.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday December 29 2014, @08:42AM
Not true with voip at least. I use a carrier provided script against 911 directly for testing.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday December 29 2014, @10:22AM
I should have been more clear - as far as I know, all the 9-1-1 dispatch organizations also have non-emergency numbers.
However they are usually cool to take a call at 9-1-1 if you tell them right away that it's not an emergency.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @03:42PM
The OP is mentally ill, and is convinced that a 'machine gun man' and the russian malfia is out to get him. He is unsure if his mom is his mom or his aunt peggy who are twins. You see his father was in the NAVY, and he has been developing a trivial 'life' application for the iPhone for the last 5 years.
Did I mention he's profoundly mentally ill?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Monday December 29 2014, @05:35PM
The OP is mentally ill
It's not a crime. And nobody needs you protecting them from things people (who may or may not be mentally ill) have written.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @05:57PM
He's a great guy, really. But once he goes off the deep end, he acts like an asshole. And ends up in jail/institution for a few months before he's back on the street again.
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday December 29 2014, @08:56PM
There is no statute of limitations on murder.
Take your defamation back to kuro5hin.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday December 29 2014, @10:20PM
Looks like you got yourself a stalker.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday December 29 2014, @11:58PM
I could have him prosecuted.
Maybe tomorrow.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday December 29 2014, @09:06PM
It's on a reading list that the California State Department of Mental Health distributes to its county clinics.
You're a little late to be reporting that I'm mentally ill. I've been pointing that out myself the whole time I've been a Soylent member.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday December 31 2014, @07:32AM
You're a little late to be reporting that I'm mentally ill. I've been pointing that out myself the whole time I've been a Soylent member.
The Phantom of the Opera makes so much more sense now.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday December 29 2014, @10:19PM
However they are usually cool to take a call at 9-1-1 if you tell them right away that it's not an emergency.
That's true, but you still shouldn't do it.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Interesting) by metamonkey on Monday December 29 2014, @05:12PM
In my county they want you to call 911 no matter what, and then they immediately ask if it's an emergency and route your call or place you on hold as needed. Basically they don't want people who aren't "sure" if something qualifies as an emergency or not to go fumbling for another number, or failing to call at all because they don't know another number, all while some situation deteriorates into an emergency. Here, if you're reporting a new crime, you call 911. Now afterwards, once you've met with a police officer, he'll give you a card.
Somebody hit my car in a parking lot and drove off. Thankfully a bystander snapped pictures of the other car's plates and left a note on my car to call him. I did, he texted me the pics (great guy!) and a description of the driver and I called 911. The officer came out, took the report, and gave me his card. Thereafter all dealings I had with the case went through his cell phone. Turned out great. They identified the driver, went to their house, found the car, got me the insurance info, and the teenage driver got something like 18 points on her license and will not be driving for a long time.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @09:19PM
In my town, our police department has a non-emergency number. After hours when no officers/personnel are at the phones, they forward calls to that number to the regional 911 operators, instead of voicemail. The 911 operators understand this and it all works out well. The 911 operator determines emergency/non-emergency status right up front.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Monday December 29 2014, @08:11AM
Psst, how accurate do you think signal strength triangulation is, anyways? The answer is, not much better than one square mile - that's if you can leverage 3 towers.
I would say it is relatively useless for 911 purposes. It certainly isn't going to pinpoint your house. If you have been in a wreck with flames and a pall of smoke, they might be able to find you pretty quick.
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday December 29 2014, @10:26AM
A cop in California said he was going to geolocate me so he could arrest me, after I requested he involuntarily admit my friend to a psychiatric hospital. I had good reason to believe she needed to be in one:
"You're in the Pacific Northwest... Oregon..."
"I'm not sure I follow your argument. I'm sitting at the counter at the Shari's 24 Hour Restaurant and Pies just off of Interstate 5's Exit 306 in North Portland. Care to elucidate?"
The system is specified to locate phones to within fifty feet. Someone dropped the ball.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 29 2014, @09:19AM
(can one hope not even NSA can locate it more precisely than 5000ft=1.5km, or is something just the 911 dispatchers can't do?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 29 2014, @03:08PM
Cricket doesn't make phones, they used to resell AT&T services and roam on Sprint, but a couple months ago they were bought by AT&T and now act as the non-contract brand for AT&T, sorta. I'd suspect the usual corporate incompetence situation. So the dispatchers try to log in with their old Cricket username/password but thats disabled because they're supposed to connect over AT&Ts gateway now that they're a mere division of AT&T, or some similar foolishness.
Also, outside CSI-type hollywood stuff, "a couple thousand feet" isn't really all that bad of a result. Especially if you don't spec a circular error probable. From fooling around with google location tracking, if you insist on 99.9% CEP I'm only getting "thousands" as a worst case, even if at only 99% I'm getting "dozens".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @09:21AM
Nice! I'm getting my next phone from cricket.
Don't care that 911 can't track my phone. The FCC rules about tracking are probably more about spying on the people then caring about their safety in the first place.
Better to die free, than live as a slave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @10:45AM
this.
it's a damn nice feature. i'd buy one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @10:57AM
Mom has a pacemaker and my aunt had that robotic surgery done on her heart.
So if they manage to dial 9-1-1 in their desperate struggle to survive, their incredible agonies as they lay dying will be comforted by the knowledge that no one can find them?
If you don't want someone to find your phone, remove the battery, or put your phone inside a faraday cage.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @11:10AM
i love to sniff grandma pussy - it's like wine tasting but with the nose!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @01:02PM
It's like fine cottage cheese.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @09:38AM
//you know what i mean, OP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @10:31AM
Our customer service personnel will respond to your request in the order that it was received.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @12:36PM
how well does the cricket fare when using it traveling in a car?
if it works well then it probably can "hear" all the cell-towers but only "talks" to them if there's a need ("hand-over please").
i suppose all the other mobile phones are all "chatty" and tell each cell-tower that they can "hear" them, thus
leading to being registered in some database somewhere and thus allowing for easy query:
"find all towers that can hear IMEI number this" -and- find signal time delay for each tower to this IMEI number -and- draw circle with radius of propagation delay (light-speed divide by time or something) -and- voila, intersections are probable location... *cricket*
(Score: 2) by Max Hyre on Monday December 29 2014, @04:47PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @07:39PM
my point was that maybe it stops "chatting" if it got one "good" connection to a tower thus leaving the other 4 without a clue, thus making it hard to 3angulate?
(Score: 2) by Max Hyre on Wednesday December 31 2014, @03:44AM
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday December 29 2014, @02:37PM
Michael, which model phone is this with? True, Altair, Desire, Lumia (1320, 635, 630, 530), Moto G, Prelude (1, 2), Sonata, Optimus, Grand (X, X Max), Galaxy (S4, S5), iPhone (5c, 5s) or your brought an unlocked phone to their service?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday December 29 2014, @10:18PM
It was the dispatcher who told me that Cricket phones don't work.
She blamed it on the phones but there are many other ways the system could fail.
I have a samsung at&t phone, I don't know the model but it was cheap as dirt.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Monday December 29 2014, @02:38PM
The FCC has been fighting the carriers about this for a while, and even has a guide to wireless 911 services [fcc.gov] that covers all of the ways that "wireless" 911 is still disturbingly behind the times. Mother Jones reported in August [motherjones.com] that the carriers were resisting even modest attempts to improve the situation, though Reuters said in November that the carriers finally created a (less ambitious) plan with public safety groups [reuters.com]: “get specific location data to 911 dispatchers for 40 percent of wireless 911 calls within two years and 80 percent within six years.”
Until last September when I had to call 911, I had been under the impression for the past few years that the government had finally 'fixed' 911 so it worked properly with cellphones. Nope. In California, calling 911 from a cellphone results in being connected to a central dispatch in a totally different part of the freaking state, so we have to relay our city, street address, what's going on, etc. to central dispatch, and then they have to transfer us to the local police/fire station or hospital.
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Monday December 29 2014, @03:03PM
PS: Cricket is AT&T. They are the parent company and network provider. So if Cricket cannot find you, then AT&T can't either. Further number of cell towers in an area will affect you too. Lots of Oregon has is nothing but "fence posts" along the highways, so the odds of getting three with-in range is low. Now Portland itself maybe better, but again the hills around it may help block need towers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @03:47PM
Cricket is a MVNO using AT&T's network with Sprint roaming. Both of those networks should support triangulation so it is not a technical problem.
(Score: 1) by Mr. Slippery on Monday December 29 2014, @07:54PM
AT&T is GSM, Sprint is CDMA. So that's a neat trick, unless I'm missing something?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @09:41PM
I misread. They are a AT&T MVNO for GSM. They do have their own CDMA network with Sprint roaming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_Wireless#Coverage_areas [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29 2014, @08:26PM
I've got Verizon in Central Illinois. Same here - dialing 911 gives you to an intermediate center which finds out what agency to route your call to. And I really didn't know that there's any difference from that on cell phones.
Sooo..... what level of "research" was done on this story before wagging the finger at Cricket? Oh, none.
Once upon a time (about the time that small scale exchanges were done with,) and there 'twern't no such thang as 911, any caller anywhere had to describe where they were and what emergency services were needed. You know, back in the day when such services were supplementary to your having a brain and being your own first responder.
Now get off my lawn!
(Score: 1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday December 29 2014, @10:21PM
The dispatchers both blamed the actual phones.
Of course there are many things that can go wrong; it's not likely the phone.
Neither of the dispatchers was in any way technically sophisticated. Like they didn't know much about how telephony actually works.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]