AT&T wireless asks for hold on emergency calls

AT&T Wireless have filed a request with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US for a further delay in the roll out of its emergency location-based mobile technology in keeping with the E911 mandate.

The move comes as the company was ordered by the FCC and several public safety organisations in the US to comply with the E911 mandate mobile detection orders of 100 metres location accuracy 67 per cent of the time and 300 metres accuracy 95 per cent of the time.

Orginally AT&T Wireless had planned to use a different technology, Mobile-Assisted Network Location System (MNLS) over its Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) network from the one now demanded by the authorities, Time Difference On Arrival (TDOA).

Rich Blasi, spokesman at AT&T Wireless, said: "We told the FCC we could rollout MNLS over the entire country, quick, by the end of March 2002. This would have provided accuracies of 250 metres 67% of the time and 750 metres, 95%. By the end of 2003 we would have dropped the parameters and made the network more accurate as technology became available," he said.

"But we were told to implement TDOA immediately," he added.

The company is now entering negotiations with two US-based companies to supply the technology, Trueposition and Grayson Wireless.

Under the new arrangements, AT&T wireless will implement TDOA over 12 states in the US at 1,600 cell sites, less than 20 per cent of the company's entire network.

Blasi commented: "After we have finished this implementation at the end of 2002, whichever public safety organisations come to us will have the technology rolled out within six months of their request."

AT&T is the latest telecoms provider to struggle to concur with the E911 mandate.