The Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Denis Naughten, and Minister for Rural and Community Development, Michael Ring, have launched a new emergency mobile phone precise location service that will greatly assist the emergency services in determining the exact location of people that call 999 or 112.
Developed by Google, the Advanced Mobile Location (AML ) technology has been implemented in Ireland by Eir, Vodafone, Three, and BT Ireland, which operates the emergency call answering service in Ireland. The emergency call answering service receives on average 4,000 mobile calls per day.
AML works by automatically finding a phone’s GPS coordinates and sending a text message to the call centre when a 112 or 999 number is dialled. The co-ordinates are immediately passed to the emergency services. It will be of vital assistance to Emergency Services around the country, but particularly in rural areas.
AML supplements the existing location information provided to the Emergency Services and does not replace it. The Emergency Services will always ask the caller for location information regardless of where they receive a location from a mobile phone or not. Currently, AML only works with the Android operating system.
Minister Naughten said: “The new system will be a huge benefit to people in need and to the emergency services across the country, but particularly in rural areas. I want to acknowledge Google for driving this new technology that will have a major impact in people’s lives.”
Minister Ring added: “This type of new technology is exactly the development that is needed for people in rural Ireland. It will lead to quicker response times and potentially save lives. This technology adds significantly to building a more connected and safer Ireland.”
