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Published Monday, August 18, 2008 in Local

Photo by Sarah Fay Campbell

When a call comes into Coweta 911, either from a landline or a wireless phone, the location of the caller immediately pops up on a map of the county. Pictured here is 911 operator Laura Jackson.

Coweta 911 now instantly maps cell phone calls

By Sarah Fay Campbell

The Times-Herald

Most Cowetans who call 911 from their cell phones don't have to worry about location errors such as the one that may have contributed to the recent death of a woman in north Fulton County.

When a call comes in to Coweta's 911 center, the location instantly pops up on a map of the county on the operator's screen. Landline calls additionally show the address where the phone call originated.

Cell phones, for the most part, can be instantly pinpointed to within 100 feet, said Eddie Ball, Coweta's 911 and emergency management director.

John's Creek resident Darlene Dukes died Aug. 2. It took 25 minutes for emergency crews to respond to her home, and nearly an hour for an ambulance to arrive.

The delay happened because the 911 operator allegedly sent an ambulance to Wells Street in southwest Atlanta instead of Duke's home on Wales Street in John's Creek.

The 911 system showed that the call originated from a cell tower in North Fulton. However, Fulton County's 911 system doesn't map wireless phone calls like Coweta's does.

Coweta upgraded its technology several years ago to provide for location of wireless phones making emergency calls.

The brand-new system at the new call center in Creekside Industrial Park has the instant mapping. Before that, an address or location coordinates would come through and would be inputted into the map.

"It's more automated," Ball said of the newest system. "You get the same information, just a lot quicker."

The only issue could be with pre-paid cell phones. Some pre-paid phones work exactly like a standard cell phone. "We don't get enough information from the pre-paids to know if they are pre-paid," Ball said.

Pre-paid cell phone users should check with their service providers to find out exactly how E911 location services work.

Cowetans who use voice over Internet protocol (Internet phones) such as Vonage get a different type of 911 service as well.

According to Ball, Vonage customers who call 911 reach Vonage's 911 center, and are then routed to the correct local 911 center.

Despite disclaimers put out by the VOIP companies, many people don't realize the difference until they have an emergency, Ball said.

When someone dials 911 from a cell phone, they should be instantly routed to the correct 911 center, based on their location. This means travelers are routed to the center nearest where they actually are, not nearest their homes.

"That pretty much works," Ball said.

There is occasionally a misroute, usually when someone is near a county line. "But we are all interconnected," Ball said. "If it is a contiguous county, it doesn't really matter. We're one button away," Ball said.

"We get a lot of misroutes from Fayette, and some from Clayton," he said. "But it's not a big problem like it is" with some VOIP companies.

Ball said the average is that calls are correctly routed 98 percent of the time, but "it is a lot higher with VOIP."