Cell phone measure on ballot in Payne County

Thursday, March 28th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) _ The problem of figuring out the location of cellular phone customers who make 911 calls will be solved if Payne County voters approve a proposition next week.

Voters are being asked to approve a monthly 50-cent fee for wireless customers, which would be used to fund locator technology on emergency cell phone calls.

Payne County would be the first county in the state to have such technology, which would allow dispatchers to identify the location of 911 calls from cell phones. The information is vital in cases where callers don't know where they are or are unable to speak, officials say.

``Right now if you call me (by using 911) from your home phone and you are having a heart attack, I know where you are,'' said Steve Trompler, director of emergency operations for Stillwater. ``If you call me from a cell phone, I don't know.''

If the countywide proposition passes Tuesday, a monthly 50-cent fee will be imposed on cell phone customers whose billing addresses are in Payne County.

Trompler said 55 percent of Stillwater's 911 calls are from cell phones, and that callers often do not know where they are.

He recalled a case two years ago when a handicapped woman with car trouble used her cell phone to dial 911 from a rural Payne County road.

``She had no idea where she was,'' he said. ``Deputies ended up driving down every road. It was a day and a half before we found her.''

Trompler said it is difficult to trace a cell phone call. With the new technology, ``obviously we will be able to get them the help they need a lot faster,'' he said.

Zach Taylor, executive director of the 911 Association of Central Governments, said other communities are moving in the same direction. The Federal Communications Commission has required all wireless carriers to make the technology available by 2005, he said.

``We are in the process of implementing equipment between now and the middle of July that will give us the ability to receive the information from the wireless carriers,'' he said.

Trompler said it will take 12 to 18 months to install the enhanced 911 wireless service. Most cell phones do not have the technology but they will in the near future, he said.

``By the time we go live with our system, the majority of the phones on the street will give us the information we need,'' Trompler said.