Emergency Caller Location Information Enhancements

Emergency Caller Location Information Enhancements To Keep Kiwis Safer

Datacom partners with MBIE to help emergency services locate emergency 111 smartphone calls more quickly and accurately

21 November 2018 – Today the New Zealand Minister of Broadcasting, Communications, and Digital Media, Hon. Kris Faafoi, announced Phase 2 of the Emergency Caller Location Information (ECLI) service. Datacom, in partnership with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) will help enhance the service to provide high-precision geo-location information for 95 per cent of all emergency 111 smartphone calls, amongst a host of other improvements.

“Each year there are more than a million calls to emergency services. In many cases callers are lost and don’t know where they are, or are unable to share that information due to disability or injury. Quick and precise caller location can be the difference between being rescued safely, or someone being in a potentially life threatening situation,” Greg Davidson, Group CEO, Datacom Group said.

At the centre of the ECLI system is the Location Area Service (LAS), designed, built and supported by Datacom. When a person dials 111 on their mobile phone the best available location is automatically sent to LAS, which processes the information and provides it to emergency services to assist in verifying a callers location. LASis built on Datacom’s own services, including Datacom SMS gateway, Datacom’s All-of-Government Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Datacom’s Telecommunications-as-a-Service (TaaS) platforms. These allow custom API integration with all of New Zealand’s mobile networks, including Google Android and Apple’s iOS smartphones.

In the first 12 months since its May 2017 launch the ECLI system was used to help verify locations of nearly 400,000 emergency calls. When these enhancements are completed by mid-2020 it is expected that a high-precision location will be provided for 95 per cent of 111 calls from smartphones.

“MBIE is pleased to partner with Datacom on delivering the important enhancements to ECLI,” Ben Quay, ECLI Programme Director, MBIE said. “The service has had real impact on improving the safety of New Zealanders and the outcomes that Datacom has achieved directly contributes to this and the success of the project.”

Key outcomes from the enhancements:

- Reduced time to verify the mobile caller's location, due to improved location accuracy, vital in timely emergency situations.

- High-precision location provided for 95% of genuine 111 calls from any New Zealand smartphone, accounting for approximately 780,000 calls per year.

- All emergency mobile calls will have a location record, regardless of platform and including New Zealand visitors ‘roaming’ in country

- Supports today’s 3G networks and tomorrow’s 4G LTE voice networks, with extension to support future 5G networks

Datacom’s original case study about ECLI can be found here https://datacomgroup.net/Case-Studies/Solutions/ECLI-system.aspx

For more information on the ECLI system, visit www.mbie.govt.nz/ecli

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