On June 16, 2013, Mary Thomas was in an apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan when she had a stroke. She was able to call 911, but her speech was slurred and she couldn't tell the dispatcher where she was. Because she was inside a high rise, the location information provided by the cell tower was way off. It took nearly eight hours to find her. Remarkably, Thomas was still alive when medics arrived and she was rushed to the hospital.

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This is an extreme example, but far from an isolated case.

 

The Find Me 911 Coalition recently surveyed emergency dispatchers in all 50 states and found that most (82 percent) do not have a great deal of confidence in the location data automatically displayed for wireless calls.

 

More than half (54 percent) said that information is regularly inaccurate.

 

The problem is only going to get worse The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates that more than 70 percent of all calls to 911 centers now come from wireless phones — that's more than 400,000 calls a day.

 

The majority of these calls (64 percent) are made indoors. And these numbers are sure to go up as even more people pull the plug on their land-line phone service at home.

 

The FCC has heard the complaints—and the horror stories—and has acknowledged the potential threat to public safety. In a speech last year, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said that "if you call 911 from a wireless phone indoors, cross your fingers, because FCC location standards for emergency calls do not apply indoors."