Province Provides Improved 911 Cellphone Service
An improvement to Nova Scotia's 911 emergency service will make it easier to trace the location of callers who use their cellphones in an emergency.
The Enhanced Cellular 911 system is now in effect provincewide. The launch comes after extensive testing and more than two years of collaboration between the wireless industry and the Emergency Management Office, which administers the province's 911 emergency service.
The system provides an approximate location of a cellular or mobile handset by estimating longitude and latitude co-ordinates. Before the enhanced system, the location of cellphone callers could only be estimated to within the area of the nearest cellphone tower.
As with emergency calls from land lines, it is important for cellphone callers to try to provide their exact location to call takers. This is particularly important if cellphone callers are in places that make global positioning technology more difficult, such as in an underground parking lot.
"I am pleased to see Nova Scotia be one of the first in Canada to provide this important public safety improvement provincewide," said Emergency Management Minister Ramona Jennex.
"Providing Enhanced Cellular 911 service shows our commitment to continually find ways to improve the safety of Nova Scotians and their communities."
Nova Scotia helped lobby to have the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission direct the industry to provide wireless, location-based services. In February 2009, the CRTC set a one-year deadline for the service to be in place wherever there are 911 programs.
Most cellphones are designed to automatically allow their location to be traced for calls to 911. Customers should contact their wireless service provider if they have questions about their cellular phone or the technology used by their provider to identify cellular location.
The Emergency Management Office provides training, specialized computer software and standard operating procedures for the 911 Emergency Service in Nova Scotia. Call answering is provided through a partnership with public and privately owned emergency dispatch centres at four locations across the province.
EMO has a rigorous quality-assurance, quality-control program to ensure a consistently high level of service.
More information on Nova Scotia's 911 emergency service can be found at http://emo.gov.ns.ca/content/911 .