By Ahmad Hathout
GATINEAU – The CRTC’s emergency services working group (ESWG) is testing Apple technology that allows first responders to get a more accurate location of where a 9-1-1 call is originating from, Cartt.ca has learned.
The proof of concept trials are part of the Regulator’s progress toward next-generation 9-1-1, which will include more ways for people to communicate with emergency dispatchers while facilitating a faster, more accurate retrieval of location to improve response times to distress calls.
The California-based company and the ESWG – consisting of telecoms, public safety answering points and 9-1-1 specialists – met in late September 2019 to discuss Apple’s technology, and committed to a two-phase test of the more accurate location technology, which uses in-device GPS and Wi-Fi to support cell tower location data, according to documents obtained by this publication.
High level details in internal CRTC emails in October show the goal was to test delivery and aggregation of iOS and Android location data. The first phase was to include delivery of iOS data to all facilities-based Canadian wireless service providers. The second stage was to deal with the delivery of iOS and Android data with a Canadian aggregator. The working group has a specific segment dedicated to exploring location-improvement technologies.
“The Commission is continuously looking at enhancing 9-1-1 services and would consider mandating solutions to continue improving the location accuracy of 9-1-1 calls through an appropriate process,” Patricia Valladao, spokeswoman for the CRTC, said in an emailed statement. “The same applies to the trials in question, which are within the purview of the Emergency Services Working Group.”
The CRTC did not provide additional information as to updates on the trials.
The ESWG had previously communicated with Google to discuss how they approach handset location technology, according to the documents. Google uses similar technology, called emergency location service (ELS), that leverages cell, GPS, WiFi and “other smartphone sensors” to estimate an accurate emergency location. Google said the technology is supported by over 99 per cent of Android devices.
In 2017, the CRTC set – and later revised – minimum and target thresholds for carriers to deliver a location to PSAPs within certain radiuses in rural and urban areas. For accuracy at less than 150 metres, service providers must have a minimum confidence level of 60% with a target of 74%; for less than 1000 metres, the minimum is bumped up to 72% with a target of 85%. For large metropolitan areas, at less than 150 metres, the minimum is 60% with a target of 72%, while at less than 1000 metres, it is 82 and 92%, respectively.
Apple claims to use confidence estimates of 95% with its location technology.
“ESWG will file a report with the recommended Canadian E9-1-1 architecture to support the in-line delivery of handset-based location to Wireless Service Providers (WSPs) for the calculation and delivery of best location data using the existing Phase II location delivery mechanism to E9-1-1 PSAPs in Canada,” according to a task activity found in the documents.
The group also gauged other location-based information from sources including Bell, cloud technology company Intrado, 9-1-1 data firm Laaser, Comtech, a telecom with expertise in emergency location technology, and RapidSOS, the New York-based company that is powering Apple’s and Google’s transport of location data to public safety answering points (PSAPs). The companies did not return a request for comment.
The large Canadian carriers either did not respond to a request for comment or deferred to the ESWG for further information on future direction.
The location-based technologies from Apple and Google are largely supplemental to other data sources at the PSAP’s disposal, and the dispatcher would still try to retrieve the location from the 9-1-1 caller.
The ESWG had tried before to get Apple to meet with them, but the company has “always said they will deal with each WSP/ILEC directly,” according to one August CRTC email. That email came in response to an invitation from Apple, through their lobbyists at McMillan Vantage, to meet about the company’s hybridized emergency location estimation technology (HELO), location transport technologies, text-to-9-1-1 and wireless alerting.
HELO, unveiled in 2015 and in use with iPhones with iOS 12 and beyond, uses a combination of cell tower, GPS and Wi-FI data points to try to pinpoint a distress call’s near-precise location. The new enhanced emergency data (EED) contrasts with the existing system called network-initiated location requests (NILR), where information about the whereabouts of a distress call are retrieved by the nearest cell towers — known as triangulation — which is then routed to the local PSAP.
“This process takes advantage of proprietary methods and network-provided assistance data (if available), to quickly calculate a low-uncertainty, high-integrity estimate of the device’s location,” Apple noted in an explainer of the technology from 2018.
In one email, Apple representatives said “Canada already has access to all of the benefits of HELO via the NILR path,” which was something they sought to discuss.
Newer technologies wouldn’t traditionally be required for landline phones because they’re tied to a physical address. For cellphones, which make up an increasingly large portion of distress calls, there could be some distance between a caller and a cell tower. The CRTC noted as such in its annual 2016 location accuracy report to the ESWG in which it expressed interest in GPS-capable handsets enabling more accurate location for PSAPs in areas with few cell towers or larger distances between cell sites.
Since 2010, the industry and public safety points have adopted enhanced 9-1-1 measures by adding longitude and latitude information of a distress call on top of the existing cell number and tower location. But local emergency operations are now yearning for faster ways to reach cell users.
“We are keen to adopt device-based location but are dependent on the carriers to send us that improved location information,” said Mike Webb, vice-president of technology services at E-Comm 9-1-1, a member of the ESWG. “We have not adopted anything to date. We will consume/process device-based location and additional data at the point those services are standardized for use and supported by telecom service providers in Canada.” Webb said his group has not been involved in the trials “to date.”
RapidSOS — the transport choice of Apple and Google data — uses an internet protocol-based data route to “quickly and securely share” HELO location data with 9-1-1 centres, “improving response time when lives and property are at risk,” the company said in a release. The RapidSOS system is integrated with 9-1-1 centres’ existing software. Google and RapidSOS partnered in 2018 to deliver better location data from Android devices.
RapidSOS is currently used by global governments and 4,500 agencies across the United States, according to its website, including in 9-1-1 centres such as in tornado-prone Oklahoma.
“Since it does not depend solely on cell tower triangulation and also uses Bluetooth and Wifi locations, it is considerably more accurate,” Lieutenant Warren Wilson of the Enid police department in Oklahoma told Cartt.ca. “I would estimate that our average area of uncertainty immediately decreased from a few hundred feet to a few dozen feet after the installation of Rapid SOS.
“We haven’t attempted to quantify the monetary savings. It does save precious seconds off of our response times quite often,” Wilson added. “It is relatively rare for a person who is under a great deal of novel stress to accurately and clearly convey their location to a 911 calltaker. With Rapid SOS, we can get help started to the general area with much less input from the caller.”
Apple also suggests its system has robust privacy and security by limiting its availability to a RapidSOS clearinghouse that’s communicating with the 9-1-1 centre in the location where the call was made, which is only transmitted if the centre is enabled to accept the enhanced emergency data. It also periodically authenticates 9-1-1 centres that will receive the data, encrypts the data to maintain confidentiality, ensures Apple has no access to the data, and forces RapidSOS to delete the data after 12 hours of being transmitted and that fails a geofilter.
However, while users can opt out of EED, it is turned on by default, as of a 2018 explainer of the technology. The technology is also available on the Apple Watch.
There are hints that the Canadian system may seek to establish an aggregated model, according to meeting minutes of the September 30 rendezvous at CRTC headquarters, where location data flows through one entity — such as through RapidSOS in the U.S. — rather than have wireless service providers deal with their own vendors.
If adopted, the CRTC will effectively follow developments south of the border, as the Federal Communications Commission ordered by 2021 carriers to be able to locate callers within 50 meters at least 80 per cent of the time.
“iOS location services are capable of exceeding this requirement today, even in challenging, dense, urban environments,” Apple said in 2018 of the FCC requirements. “This new feature allows Apple to make these benefits available to local 911 centers now rather than years from now.” Former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler praised the technology as one that will improve public safety.
Until then, next-generation 9-1-1 network providers and telecoms in Canada were to have internet-supported voice services by June 30th, 2020 and text messaging by December 31st, 2020, but those dates have been delayed due to the Covid-19 crisis.
