Under ANCOM’s Decision, the providers of mobile public telephony networks will have the obligation to take all necessary measures to enable the transmission of the location information – respectively the latitude and longitude of the geographic position of the callers’ terminal equipment – from the terminal to the SNUAU administrator, within 20 seconds from the call initiation, at least for the emergency calls to 112 initiated from mobile terminals that have the respective capabilities. For example, in the case of terminals endowed with an Android operation system available on the market, starting from Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), one can activate functionalities enabling location identification.

 

”In addition to the primary location identification information, available from the cellular network and to the introduction of the latitude and longitude data generated by a smartphone, this decision establishes the providers’ possibility to also transmit - to the 112 operator - the calls initiated from a data connection by means of any internet access networks, when the caller is situated in an area that is not covered by any mobile telephony networks (for example, a basement/semi-basement without GSM/3G/4G coverage, yet with access to WiFi internet). In such situations, the 112 operator will be sent the latest primary location identification information available from the terminal, as well as the corresponding time-stamp” explained Eduard Lovin, Executive Director for Regulation of ANCOM.

 

Moreover, with a view to improving the SNUAU capacity to determine the location information for an emergency call under processing, mobile public telephone network providers will make available to the former any further details they may hold or obtain from using the network equipment and systems that are relevant for identifying caller location more accurately, under the decision provisions.

Within the National Council for SNUAU Coordination, ANCOM will collaborate with the SNUAU administrator, i.e. the Special Telecommunications Service, in order to establish a set of parameters for conducting statistics on the quality of the terminal equipment location information transmitted to SNUAU, as well as a procedure for analysing such information.

 

Given the recent technical advancements on the level of mobile networks and terminals, the ANCOM decision complements the “cell-ID” identification method by more precise location identification methods that should enable emergency dispatchers to identify locations as close as possible to the 112 callers. Such advanced caller location identification solution include, for example, the Advanced Mobile Location (AML) functionality, already available on some terminals, which enables enhanced accuracy identification of caller location information, based on the data generated by global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), by WiFi and/or by the “cell-ID” method.