District using new technology to pinpoint location of wireless 911 calls

SOURCE: The Washington Post

DATE: February 17, 2019

The District is using new technology to more precisely pinpoint the location of people who use smartphones to call 911, a shift aimed at getting first responders to emergencies as quickly as possible.

City officials joined with a company called RapidSOS that has helped police and fire departments across the country overcome a critical gap in responding to calls: the inability of modern phones to communicate location data to 911 systems built when people talked only over wires.

It’s a problem because more than 80 percent of the calls to the nation’s 911 centers are from cellphones. That mirrors the District, which fields up to 3,500 911 calls a day.

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