More accurate location data will enable emergency services to reach people in need quickly and thus help them out in a timely manner. It could be the matter of life and death for some people. To aid in these efforts, Google will now be providing more accurate location data to 911 call centers of callers who use Android smartphones.
Google has teamed up with T-Mobile and emergency technology companies RapidSOS and West for this service. It will send location data from its Emergency Location Service to 911 call centers when an emergency call is placed by someone with an Android device.
The data will be sent via the carrier for T-Mobile customers while call centers using RapidSos will get the data through that company. Google’s partnership with West also enables this functionality for the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Google did run tests on this technology a few months back. Location data was sent straight to 911 call centers when the call was made from an Android device. Reports suggested that this system provided operators will location data that was more accurate than what carriers provided and it also did that faster. Google’s Emergency Location Service is currently available in 14 countries and it sends location data to emergency call centers for more than 140,000 calls daily.