Dialing
an emergency number the UK and Estonia will now instantly send information
about your location if you're calling from an Android device, Google announced on July 25th, 2016.
With the change, 999 operators (the
emergency number in the UK and many other countries) will be able to access
information from Android's new Emergency Location Service. ELS makes up for
where tracking via GPS and cellphone towers can sometimes suffer: indoors.
Google is vague on how it works - it still uses GPS and cell signals, in
addition to location data from apps and Wi-Fi. It can also turn on a phone's location
services if a user has them off.
The service will be available on 99
percent of Android devices (those with Android 2.3 and up). It will be
supported by major UK carriers, including EE, BT, Three, Vodafone and O2.
Neither Apple or Microsoft has commented on whether their users will have
access to similar services.
Customarily, an operator will still ask
a caller for their location, but a GPS location is sent to them anyway. But
wireless devices have long been trickier than landlines - even with a GPS
location, it can be hard to locate a caller inside a building, especially on
with many floors or if they're underground. There's technology in development
that's intended to address this problem, called Indoor Positioning
Systems (IPS), but
it's under development but not perfect and not as widely used.
In the U.S., Federal Communications
Commission policy is to leave the specific location-tracking technology up to
each individual carrier. There are certain standards, like requiring devices to
send their location GPS, but as for more precise location information that GPS
cannot track (such as indoors, on different floors, in parking garages, etc.),
the procedures can vary.
Google hasn't said whether they will be
bringing ELS to the U.S., but said they are “actively engaging” to expand the
service to other territories as well. They also assured that this service is
"solely for the use of emergency service providers," and that it will
not be collecting location data from users on a wider scale.
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