Phantom calls to 911 from cellular phones is not just a local problem, but a growing national phenomena that is clogging emergency phone lines across the nation. "We knew that there were instances where a cell phone or other device like a fax machine would accidentally dial 911 for some reason, but in the last few months this problem has grown to the point of concern," said Dick Bartlett, Executive Administrator for the Louisville and Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency which oversees the 911 system. "The problem is stemming from the explosion of new, smaller cellular phones that are designed to fit into a pocket, purse, or hang on a belt. Many of these phones, as a convenience and cost cutting measure, have a dialing buttons that are exposed."

Bartlett noted that "We selected a day at random and tracked every phantom 911 call we got from a cellular phone. There were 298 calls, 154 from one vendor alone." The largest number of calls came from phones served by GTE/Verizon, Nextel, BellSouth Mobility, and Tritel/SunCom.

Bartlett is quick to point out, though, that the problem is NOT the specific service provider, it is directly associated with the style of cellular phone and features that may be programmed into the handset. "Probably as a marketing or convenience feature, the phone will have the ‘1’ or the ‘9’ key pre-programmed so that the user simply has to press and hold the designated key for a few seconds and it will start dialing 9-1-1 on its own." "It’s just as easy and fast to dial 9-1-1 <send> as it is to press and hold the special key, and it is doubtful that you’ll do that by accident." Bartlett said.

When a silent 911 call comes in to the Public Safety Answering Point the operator needs to make sure that this isn’t a call from someone in trouble who can’t speak. And that’s not always easy to figure out. They have to listen carefully to background noises and conversations very often to see what is going on. The operator will often try calling out several times saying something like, "This is 911... do you need police, fire or EMS" to see if there is some type of response.

What the operators hear can often be a little humorous, though. "They have overheard discussions between office workers in the lunch room, people driving down the road singing to their favorite tunes, hammering nails, and talking to the nurse in a doctor’s office." While they are trying to sort out the ghosts from the real calls for help, there may be delays in answering emergency calls. "These phantom 911 calls can be a real problem when we get busy, a storm is blowing through, or there is a bad accident."

Unfortunately, the current state of wireless 911 does not provide the automatic location of a cellular caller, and only about half the cellular providers are sending a call-back telephone number. The nation is going through a cellular 911 upgrade that was mandated by the Federal Communications Commissioner. "We are now in Phase 1, where services in Kentucky are working to be able to send local dispatch centers the cellular phone’s actual telephone number, and the cellular tower that the call is coming from." Bartlett went on to say that "Beginning late year the industry is supposed to start rolling our technology that will begin to display the location of a cellular phone, much like a wired telephone calling 911 from your home."

The challenge to this Automatic Location Identification (ALI) process is to find the caller’s location on the earth within a reasonable distance from the actual location. "Until May 1st the best we could have hoped for was 100 meters (328 feet), but now we can get accuracy to about 10 meters or better (33 feet)." In May President Clinton ordered the military to turn off a system that created deliberate distortion in the signals of geo-positioning satellites (GPS) that are used by the military, surveyors, civilian transportation systems, and outdoorsmen. "The exact nature of the new technology, either GPS or a triangulation system based on ground receivers, has not been finalized so it is likely this next phase will be pushed back a few more years" Bartlett observed.

Another concern is a new program being promoted in the Louisville area called "Phones 4 Safety". This campaign started in late summer, and is intended to give old cellular phones to potentially battered or abused women through local shelters. The old phones are supposedly reprocessed, have their phone numbers and other identifying information deleted, and are then packaged for shelters to give out. "The idea is to give the victim a phone they can carry that will allow them to call 911 if they are being pursued by an abuser. Unfortunately, people think that a cellular call to 911 comes in with the same information on the screen for the dispatcher like a wired 911 phone... and that’s not the case." Mr. Bartlett pointed out that "Right now we can not find people calling from these phones because the technology is not here yet, and we don’t get a phone number to trace or call-back. If you can’t speak to us, and tell us where you are, we have no idea where to begin looking." He noted that the best we might be able to do with some of the phones going through providers who are already Phase-1 compliant is to get an idea what part of the city or county they are calling from based on the tower they are talking to.

"We have already had a case of a call from one of these ‘safety phones’ where the victim could not speak or indicate where she was because the abuser was sitting next to her, but dialed 911 from inside her car and threw it on the floor. We knew she was in trouble, but could not find her. There was nothing we could do. It was very frustrating for the 911 operators."

Bartlett has already spoken with the four wireless carriers involved in the initial test sample, and has addressed the problem with the new Kentucky Commercial Mobile Radio System Board that oversees wireless 911. He has also addressed the Kentucky Emergency Number Association (KENA) on the problem, and confirmed that Louisville and Jefferson County were not alone.