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Verizon takes the lead on text to 911 services
The FCC first outlined its intention to allow texting to emergency services back in 2010, and since then despite more talk of accepting photo and video messages, nothing official came to be. This week, however, Verzion has taken the initiative, and announced its own plans to enable text to 911 for its customers. Working with TeleCommunication Systems, the big red hopes that it can facilitate the sending of SMS messages to emergency call-centers as soon as early 2013. Texting isn't just about adding communication options, it also provides a valuable tool to the deaf, hard of hearing and situations where talking is dangerous, or not possible. The service will use existing CDMA and SMS networks, and therefore should be available to all customers once finally rolled out.
How Siri could change the 911 emergency system
Right now, the 911 emergency call system is designed to accept one thing -- phone calls. However, the US is on the verge of moving to Next Generation 911, which is a dramatic upgrade to the system that allows communications to be made via voice, video, and text. GigaOM's John Wilson postulates in a recent post that Apple's Siri could revolutionize emergency calls and home health care. In his post, Wilson describes an all too common scenario -- an elderly woman having a cardiac event who is able to dial 911, but can't speak more than a few words. As a result, she can't let the responders know what's wrong or tell them anything about existing medical conditions or medications. With Siri, he believes that a key phrase could set off a video call to emergency personnel who could use their own eyes and ears to get a better picture of what's going on. As part of Next Generation 911, GPS location information is sent with the call, so responders are able to discern the exact location of a caller even when they can't tell the emergency center where they are. Wilson has the key phrase launching an app, sending either focused information or a patient's entire medical history to the responders. Finally, a Siri-based emergency calling system could even notify next of kin as to what is happening and what hospital the caller is being taken to. Wilson then focuses on home health care, noting that Siri's natural language capabilities could make life better for millions of elderly or homebound. As he notes, there are many specialty devices for this market right now, but they're all expensive and relatively difficult to use. Wilson sees Siri being used to set and vocalize reminders of when to take medications, initiate video checkups with care providers or family members, and "begin a smooth chain reaction of events that would otherwise require far more time and energy to do - two things our elderly, chronically ill population have the least of." This won't happen overnight, of course, but as Wilson notes, "Clearly it won't just be Siri alone in this revolution of health care. Many more services will be created, and many more similar innovations are on the horizon. But every revolution needs its leader, and Siri is undoubtedly it."
FCC details plans to bring texting, photos and video to 911 service
The FCC started talking about its intention to allow for 911 texting (and even photos and videos) last year, and now Chairman Julius Genachowski is out with a detailed plan for a "next generation" 911 service. The standout feature of it is just that -- the ability to send a text, photo or video in the event of an emergency -- but that also brings with it a complete overhaul of the backend of the service, and a switch to an IP-based architecture from the current circuit-switched system. That, the FCC says, should provide more flexibility and resiliency, and the agency has a number of other improvements in mind as well, including increased accessibility for people with disabilities, and new measures to improve the accuracy of location gathering (including new rules for wireless carriers). Of course, it all still is just a plan at the moment, but the FCC says it will consider a move to accelerate adoption of the plan next month.
