Does this new service mean that 9-1-1 call centres can now pinpoint my exact location?
A. No. The location information provided can vary greatly from a few meters to several hundred meters, depending on the location of the call, the local environment and the technology employed. The new service does NOT provide a street address or apartment number. The location information is based on the longitude and latitude coordinates of where the handset is located. It is also important to note that there are several limitations in the provision of handset location. For example, because GPS requires line-of-sight to the sky in order to communicate with satellites, a call placed from within a building is less likely to be able to provide handset location information using GPS, especially in areas where there are no windows such as a basement or underground parking garage. In the case of triangulation technology, which requires several surrounding cell sites or cell towers to determine the handset location, the cell sites or cell towers may be very widely spaced out in more rural are
