Carriers meeting CRTC 911 upgrade timeline “a significant challenge”

Remeber back in January the CRTC made a firm request to all carriers to upgrade their 911 technology by February of 2010. The reason for this is because 911 dispatchers are missing some necessary equipment to locate emergency calls placed from a cell phone.

Rogers, Telus and Bell are working to meet the CRTC requirements on time, but Berhard Lord, Head of the CWTA (Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association) made his viewpoints heard by saying “It’s going to be a significant challenge to deploy this county-wide for next February…Your mobile device will send, perhaps, the longitude and latitude of where you are, or where you are to the closest tower, depending on which technology is adopted, but that won’t necessarily give you the address. It would be up to the carriers, such as Rogers, Telus, and Bell to decide if they want to increase fees for upgrading 911 service”.

The cost of this enhancement is estimated to cost $50-million.

Related posts:

1. CRTC officially gives carriers 1-year to fix Emergency 911 services
2. CRTC orders cellphone companies to upgrade system by February 2010
3. CRTC to hammer down on “premium” text messages rules?
4. CRTC rejects Rogers request to add unsolicited text messages to DNCL