You wake up in the middle of the night, you here unfamiliar voices coming from downstairs, you hear them rummaging through your things, you reach for the phone but it’s dead.   You get your mobile phone but then you think, “What if they hear me talking?  They might kill me!”

So you wish you could just silently send a text message to 911. But unfortunately, they can’t receive text messages–they aren’t equipped to receive such media yet.  What a dilemma!  But as technology seems to be taking over everything, receiving text messages may soon be incorporated in 911, and some call centers have already begun the transition.

On August 10, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG911) services in the 2011 APCO Conference in Philadelphia.  They are looking into making text services and multimedia (photos and videos) available for the public to use so that first responders can better prepare for the situation.

“It’s hard to imagine that airlines can send text messages if your flight is delayed, but you can’t send a text message to 9-1-1 in an emergency,” Genachowski said, according to Politico. “The unfortunate truth is that the capability of our emergency response communications has not kept pace with commercial innovation — has not kept pace with what ordinary people now do every day with communications devices.”

The FCC released their five-step action plan for the NG911.

• Develop location accuracy mechanisms for NG-911
• Enable consumers to send text, photos, and videos to PSAPs (NPRM)
• Facilitate the completion and implementation of NG911 technical standards
• Develop a NG911 governance framework
• Develop an NG911 Funding Model

NG911 was initiated by the US Department of Transportation and is spearheaded by the Transportation Safety Advancement Group (TSAG) since its introduction in Washington, DC in September 2010.

Aside from this new collaboration with TSAG, the FCC has already improved safety measures with their Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN), strengthened and enhanced existing E-911 Location Accuracy Rules. This laid the groundwork for a nationwide, Interoperable Public Safety Broadband Network, and granted waivers to build out the public safety network.

The question now is, do we need this?  Are we ready for this?  Are they ready for us?  Ever since I can remember, people have been placing prank calls to 911 to which they responded to and in some cases, because of these prank calls, real emergencies were put on hold.  So would it be really wise to introduce text functions to 911?  Wouldn’t that triple or even quadruple pranks to 911?

Aside from this, how reliable will their tracking system be?  When E-Comm allowed VoIPs to make 911 calls, this resulted to more pranking incidents that some even involved hackers making prank calls just like what happened last month when SWAT arrived in the Langley residence because of a stupid prank call that almost landed the Langley teenagers in prison.

There’s certainly a balance to reach here, as technology often holds the promise of making our lives better, but can often make things more complicated.  But as one of the most important systems in our society, 911 should find a way to become more pragmatic and useful on all ends.  Hopefully this can be achieved through careful consideration of the technology at hand as we all must move into the future.