Emergency Services ask for the Deployment of Advanced Mobile Location

After dialling the emergency services, citizens rightly expect to be located as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, in most of Europe, locating citizens in distress is often inaccurate, potentially putting people at further risk. This is because the location data provided to the emergency services is mostly ineffective.

Advanced Mobile Location (AML) is a simple and cost-effective solution that is working right now in the UK. It was implemented by BT, EE and HTC, and is now also supported by O2 and Three (mobile networks), and Sony (handset manufacturer). It is up to 4,000 times more accurate than the previous system, saving lives, time, and money. When an emergency call is made with an AML enabled smart phone, the phone automatically activates its location service and sends this data via a text message to the emergency services, often within a radius of 30 meters or less. It uses GPS or Wi-Fi – whichever is best at the given instance.

Forty-six (46) emergency services representatives, members of the European Emergency Number Association (EENA), covering twenty-seven (27) countries, congratulated all involved parties for this significant achievement in an open letter. Additionally, they invited all handset manufacturers and operating system providers to deploy AML and implement it on their smartphones as AML would drastically improve caller location information.

Gary Machado, EENA Executive Director said: “I encourage all the stakeholders to show leadership that would allow for the better protection of our citizens during emergencies. The capital investment needed for AML is almost zero leading to a fast and effective deployment with immediate results and impact.”