Denis Paiste, The Union Leader (Manchester, NH)

MANCHESTER – Cell phones are so prevalent these days that even 911 calls from inside buildings are made more often from cell phones than desk phones.

That’s a problem for locating the cell phone caller, but Cellular Specialties has a solution.

CSI’s Co-Pilot Beacon Transmitter pinpoints the location of a 911 call to within 50 meters, about half the length of a football field, which is a vast improvement over potential errors of up to a mile without it.

“It’s somewhat revolutionary,” Scott Goodrich, president of the company’s Products division, said.

Because it’s specifically designed for CDMA cellular networks, it works with Verizon Wireless and Sprint but not AT&T or T-Mobile.

“The problem is that the carriers really don’t have a good way to trilaterate,” Goodrich said.

To trilaterate means to gauge location by combining differences in time of arrival for data at three different cell towers to pinpoint your phone.

“It’s been a known problem inside buildings for years,” Goodrich said.

R. Bruce Wilson, currently president and CEO of CSI, said 80 percent of cell-phone use is now inside structures.

Goodrich said over 70 percent of 911 calls – 202,000 calls in the U.S. every day – are made from mobile handsets now.

“And over 80 percent of mobile calls are made from within buildings,” he said.

“The bigger problem for location is in buildings rather than outdoors.”

Most cell phones have a GPS-chip, but building materials block the signal from coming in, Goodrich said. “As much as 70 percent of in-building space can’t actually receive or send accurate GPS information,” he said.

“So, if I’m calling 911 and I’m in a building, it’s not really much of anything, because they won’t be able to find me,” he said.

“Unless you tell them,” he said.

Amplification systems and repeater technology, whether from CSI or competitors, improve coverage and capacity, but also reduce the accuracy of location because of shielding and timing delays that buildings introduce.

CSI gets around that problem by putting in multiple strategic beacons, which are similar to a cell site, in airport terminals, on college campuses or at other public spaces.

CSI has a Co-Pilot Beacon Transmitter project under way at the University of North Carolina, which will be installed in the next two to three weeks.

Its first installation was at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Both are projects for the Verizon Wireless network.

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