[it wire] Fifty two percent of Australians think their location can be pinpointed when they call emergency services from their mobile phone. They're wrong, but the ACMA aims to change that, to some extent.
The ACMA is planning to make it a requirement of mobile network operators that they provide, on request from emergency services, "all location information available" about the caller. In the short term, however, this is likely to be of very limited help to anyone in dire straits.
The ACMA says that, with the current technology implemented by Australian mobile operators "the mobile location information made available to emergency service organisations would range from 50m to several kilometres, depending on the number of mobile base stations in the vicinity of the mobile handset making the call."
That's the good news. The bad news is that only two of Australia's three mobile network operators provide even this information (the ACMA won't say which ones).
The ACMA has released a discussion paper on its proposal to amend emergency call service rules to require mobile carriers to provide all location information available in association with a genuine emergency call at the request of an emergency service organisation.
It does not hold out great hopes for more accurate location information being available any time in the near future. "Put simply, there is currently no single and widely available method that can accurately pinpoint a mobile phone user's location and then pass the information to emergency operators. Such accuracy is not expected to be made available on a reasonable cost basis for some years to come and will always be difficult in a country with the land mass and sparse population of Australia."
ACMA wants emergency services to be able to locate mobile callers
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