>
> I'd think that authentication was a significant issue for false alarms
> etc. While the cost of responding to a false 911 call in a city may be a
> few thousand dollars absorbed into general expenses, the cost of
> responding to a false EPIRB at sea might be millions, while backcountry
> searches are not inexpensive either.
> (http://www.epirb.de seems good)
False calls are a significant problem, but likely deliberately made
(false alarms made to the fire service, calls say in Northern Ireland to
draw the police and/or army into ambushes, etc) or, according to reports
in the last year by emergency services in the UK, by people for trivial
or non-serious conditions (ambulances being called for because people
have a temperature). The call may be false, but the location from where
the call is made is not in question.
With the mobile environment, geographic location needs to be established
to ensure a response to the right general location, assuming originating
line identification is being generated. But correct identification of
the mobile is not sufficient. With GSM, at least, as I understand it the
network operator provides triangulation data to locate the mobile. Iff
this is off-shore, there may be less certainty as to location, and there
can be difficulties in border areas. For example, UK mobiles operating
on the northern French coast near Calais are well within range of UK
base stations. There may well be some delay whilst Dover Police catch
the fast ferry to respond to an emergency on Cap Griz Nez or Cap Blanc
Nez :-) .
> Landline 911 calls are authenticated by caller ID. Mobile calls too, I
> imagine.
'Authenticated' is not quite the right description. A presented number
may
well be that of the line or mobile. But of course users may chose to
suppress the number (but still available on calls to the emergency
services?) and more importantly PBXs may well be set up only to present
one, main, incoming number (and quite possibly this will be for a number
of linked, geographically dispersed networks). For one system I know of
directly, the presented number is 0+ the PBX extension number.
I believe all UK fixed and mobile networks now support originating line
identification.
> (are we all North American ? I know it's 999 in the UK and something else
> in a new European standard...)
>
999 and 112 in the UK, 112 throughout the European Union (plus
additional local options like the UK's longstanding 999). I'm not sure
of the wider European Economic Area, or candidate countries for EU
membership, or wider than that.
As a very least requirement, calls to the emergency services must be
enabled......
Of course, knowledge of from where an emergency call is made does not of
itself provide any information about the identity of the caller, but
perhaps (linked to mobile operator and virtual operator, and retailer,
records) information as to the identity of the 'owner' - and if a
corporate/organisation user this may only provide centralised billing
records. The identity of the ultimate user will likely be buried in
personnel records.
-- Dominic Pinto ------------- Associate Director @ TCUK | Barn Cottage, Hill House Senior Associate Telesphere Limited | Somerton Road, Souldern http://www.telespherelimited.com | Bicester, Oxon, OX25 6LS, UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ph/Fax: +44 1869 346375 Cellphone/GSM Mobile: +44 780 302 8268 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Were you a student at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne? Register now on 'NUgrad' - YOUR interactive on-line database - at http://www.ncl.ac.uk/alumni/NUgrad ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the 40th European Telecommunications Conference Barcelona Spain August 21st - 25th 2001 '2001 European Odyssey - Telecommunications in the e-society' at http://www.fitce.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Internet should be for Everyone - help make it so by joining the Internet Society ISOC - http://www.england.isoc.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "This e-mail, and the information it contains or is attached to it, is private and confidential and is intended for the addressee only. The unauthorised use, modification, disclosure, copying or distribution of this e-mail or any of the information it contains or is attached to it is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately."Received on Tue Jul 17 05:50:51 2001
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