Apple has spent much of its promotional push behind iOS 12 so far focused on features that range from silently useful, like Safari’s new privacy powers[1], to off-puttingly quirky, like animoji tongue-tracking[2]. But on Monday the company detailed an upcoming iPhone upgrade with real-world consequences: It will communicate your exact location to 911 operators when you call, saving valuable time when every second matters.
To do so, Apple has partnered with RapidSOS, a startup that focuses on upgrading the byzantine backends of the nation’s roughly 6,500 emergency call centers. The move won’t improve every call to 911 overnight, but it’s as big a step as anyone has taken so far to fix a problem decades in the making.
Location, Location, Location
To understand the impact of the Apple and RapidSOS solution, it helps to know the roots of the problem. For that, you need to go back to the advent of the emergency call system, which dates back to the late 1960s.
It seems reasonable to spare you the full history of telecom-based emergency response solutions. The upshot, though, is this: Everything about the infrastructure that underpins 911 was built for landlines. The data associated with incoming calls is limited to 512 bytes, which RapidSOS CEO Michael Martin notes is less than what traveled along the first transatlantic cable.
'The sooner you get there the greater the probability of providing potentially life-saving services.'
Brian Fontes, National Emergency Number Association
In other words, there’s typically no room for any information beyond someone’s voice. For years, that was good enough, in large part because call centers could tap into the local phone company’s billing database to identify the address associated with the incoming number. But with more than 80 percent of incoming emergency calls originating