[hugh]

Canada's telecom regulator will force the cellphone industry to upgrade the country's 911 system, which has fallen behind other parts of the world and may be contributing to deaths involving wireless calls for help.
Government officials said they would impose a February, 2010, deadline to install the necessary equipment to give 911 dispatchers the ability to locate cellular calls in an emergency.

Globe and Mail Story

More than half of all 911 calls in Canada come from cellphones.

My thoughts: The cost is $50 million. That's about $2.50 for every cell phone user in Canada. It's peanuts. Lets do it and get on with it rather than squabbling.

 

[d2e8b8]

They collect a fee every month for 911 service. What exactly is the money for.

 

[polaris]

Spas and corporate jets.

 

[Deckster]

My thoughts: The cost is $50 million. That's about $2.50 for every cell phone user in Canada. It's peanuts. Lets do it and get on with it rather than squabbling.

You can remove Bell Mobility lines from your calculations because they have had to ability to locate 911 callers for several years now with E911.

 

[electricguy]

Matt Armstrong dialled 911 after losing his bearings overnight near Williams Lake, but dispatchers could not figure out where he was.

Police found his body on New Year's Day

It has been a sad week for my girlfriend and her son. Matt was her sons best friend growing up together though out elementary school and they had stayed friends well after that.

I never knew the young lad ,but how this was handled sure has raised some questions which the police will no longer answer. Its seems to be a coroner investigation now.

 

[outinthornhill]

Despite The Globe and Mail's sensational headline, it is very doubtful that the enhanced 9-1-1 service would have made any difference in the sad Williams Lake incident. In order for GPS locating to work, three signal sources are required. A quick look at the wireless towers site map reveals Telus and Rogers each have one tower in/near Williams Lake. Assuming the victim's phone had power to keep sending a signal, the best that could have been done would have been to locate him to within about a 50km radius of Williams Lake, something the RCMP no doubt could have surmised without the aid of any big-city newspaper reporters or modern technology. The Globe's source for its story and headline was the victim's 17 year old girlfriend and apparently no attempt was made to contact Telus/Rogers to corroborate the theory.

The death is sad, but not as sad as the future lives that will be lost because headline hunting, ad-revenue chasing newspapers have mislead readers to believe their cell-phone is a remote GPS device capable of sending their location to emergency personnel. I am sorry the victim's family and friends and this tragedy are being used to sell newspapers.

Nothing sinister should be assumed because a death by other than obvious natural causes is referred to the coroner or that the RCMP will provide their evidence to the coroner rather than the media.

 

[electricguy]

The RCMP news release
http://bc.rcmp.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=50&contentId=7794&index=9&languageId=1

I really think they should of called SAR after the first couple calls from Matt

 

[outinthornhill]

As I stated earlier, Telus confirmed triangulation was not possible, Globe and Mail hysteria notwithstanding.

 

[electricguy]

A few more details

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/...ozen_090115/20090115/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome