A dispute between the Greater Harris County (Texas) 9-1-1 Network and Houston Cellular concerning a Phase II enhanced 911 deployment in Houston could be headed to court.
GHC 9-1-1 last week filed a lawsuit claiming one of Houston Cellular’s owners, BellSouth Cellular Corp., interfered with a contract the county had with Houston Cellular to trial TruePosition Inc.’s network-based wireless location technology. The lawsuit seeks to prevent BellSouth from interfering with the contract and allow GHC 9-1-1 to move forward with the trial of the system.
AT&T Wireless Services Inc. is Houston Cellular’s other owner.
GHC 9-1-1 claims BellSouth sought to terminate the contract for Phase II testing after it assumed primary management for Houston Cellular late last year. Julie DiCarlo, manager of external affairs for Houston Cellular, denies the management change had any bearing on the decision to terminate the contract.
Last June, GHC 9-1-1 signed a contract with TruePosition Inc., and around the same time it signed a 10-month agreement with Houston Cellular to test new location technologies. The testing has been conducted on mock 211 calls and simulated 911 calls.
GHC 9-1-1 wants to expand the trial to include live emergency calls, an idea Houston Cellular is resisting because it says only a small percentage of wireless customers would be located. The trial system, said Houston Cellular, covers less than 2 percent of the company’s service area and only locates customers on its analog network.
DiCarlo said Houston Cellular offered to extend the trial with GHC 9-1-1 by six months as long as the trial continued under the original contract’s parameters and did not include live emergency calls. GHC 9-1-1 did not accept that proposal, she said.
GHC 9-1-1 said the contract provided for six months of testing on actual 911 calls.
“We are at a loss as to why BellSouth would seek to eliminate an important technology that greatly enhances the current 911 emergency system,” said Fred Hagans, the attorney representing GHC 9-1-1. “With a mandate from the FCC to implement the system by 2001, the technology currently available and successfully tested so far, the equipment in place and ready to be switched on, and the cost being borne by Greater Harris County 9-1-1, why would it not be initiated?”
DiCarlo said before Houston Cellular would agree to commercially deploy any location system, it first must test other solutions available to find the most accurate and reliable system for its customers. The company has talked with other location vendors about potential trials, said DiCarlo.
In addition, DiCarlo said Houston Cellular is fully prepared to offer Phase I services in the area, which have not yet been deployed. Part of the reason the company terminated the trial was to focus on getting Phase I technology deployed in the area and to test other location solutions, said DiCarlo.
“We believe it is premature and extremely risky to our customers to make a technology decision now, based solely on the testing of one available solution and without a thorough evaluation of test data,” said Houston Cellular. “Until we are confident that we have adequately reviewed all technology options and have found a long-term, accurate and reliable solution, it would be irresponsible of us to deploy a technology.”
DiCarlo said the trial has been successful, but Houston Cellular has not yet had a chance to fully evaluate the data from the trial. GHC 9-1-1 said location accuracies during the trial far surpassed Federal Communications Commission Phase II requirements.
GHC 9-1-1 estimates it handles 7,000 911 calls each day, 2,000 of which are wireless calls.
