When Kristine Chapman answers a call for help, the speed of her response depends on the source of the message’s transmission — something Douglas County officials are working to correct.

Today, taking a 911 call from a land-line phone allows Chapman to know exactly where the call is originating, see who’s paying the bill and hear the voice of the person seeking help. That means she can dispatch a police officer to the scene within seconds.

Taking a call from a wireless phone offers up a voice but little else. Only a “NO RECORD FOUND” message flashes on one of the five flat-screen computer monitors arrayed at her desk in Douglas County’s Emergency Communications Center.

And if the wireless caller can’t relay the most vital piece of information — where the emergency is taking place — all the high-tech gadgets in the center may as well be turned off.

“We have to get creative,” Chapman said. “I remember taking a call from a woman who’d had an accident. All she knew was that she was on a highway between Lawrence and Kansas City. It took me quite a while to determine that she was on K-10, but I still didn’t know if she was on the Douglas County side or the Johnson County side. I finally had to ask her if the sides of the road were paved or gravel. That’s the only way I figured out where she was.”

Such limitations on service have county officials once again poised to push for extending “enhanced 911” service to include calls from wireless phones, an issue that has frustrated communications leaders for years.

Governments want money to pay for new equipment and cover growing operations. Wireless companies accept federal mandates to install the necessary equipment, but don’t want to be forced to accept government-mandated caps on fees that they would assess their customers.

Fees on hold

Nearly half of the calls that Kristine Chapman, a communications officer in Douglas County's Emergency Communications Center, takes at work come from mobile phones. County officials are pushing for a new fee on wireless phones to boost the information available to emergency dispatchers.

In January, the Kansas Legislature once again will be asked to approve a law that would mandate wireless carriers — such as Sprint PCS, Cingular and others — to add a 75-cent fee to their customers’ monthly bills. The money would be split among governments and carriers to accumulate the equipment and other components necessary to transmit and translate the flood of new 911 data.

The fee would be the same amount now charged to users of land-line phones. Those funds — estimated to be $440,000 this year in Douglas County — are used to finance equipment and operations of dispatch centers no matter who calls for help.

Plans to charge such fees for wireless customers have been before legislators for at least three years, only to run into political static each time. During the past legislative session, a compromise bill stayed alive until 4:30 a.m. of the last day, only to remain unapproved when the final gavel fell.

“We just ran out of time,” said state Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, who has pushed for enhanced 911 services for wireless customers as a member of the House Utilities Committee. “I think the chances are very good this (coming) year. It’s a public safety issue and it’s an equity issue.”

Wireless calls mount

Jim Denney, director of emergency communications for Douglas County, said at least 20,000 of the 45,000 calls the county received through 911 last year came from mobile phones.

¢ 6News video: Mobile phones stretch 911’s limits¢ Audio from Jim Denney, Douglas County’s director of emergency communications

And the rise in popularity of cell phones is driving up the number of 911 calls while draining the pool of resources to pay for the service, Denney said. This year’s projected $440,000 in fee collections would be down from nearly $460,000 last year and nearly $470,000 in 2000.

“Unfortunately, I’m afraid it’s going to take an emotional response to a problem,” Denney said. “There’s going to have to be some kind of disaster because this thing doesn’t exist, yet, in Kansas. And then, perhaps, the people will get over their objections. …

“Let’s just do it. However it gets done, let’s do it.”

Mike Murray, a lobbyist for Sprint, understands the value of enhanced 911 services for wireless callers. A Sprint employee once died after an auto accident, despite having called dispatchers on her wireless phone; unable to communicate her location near the Kansas Turnpike’s Bonner Springs interchange, emergency workers didn’t find her until it was too late.

Sprint is ready to install equipment and is poised to do so, he said, once county centers install the necessary equipment as required by law. The company just wants to make sure it can recoup its investment.

Jim Denney, Douglas County's emergency communications director, is counting on the Kansas Legislature to assess monthly fees on bills for wireless phone service -- money that would be used to upgrade equipment in emergency dispatch centers. Denney needs up to 0,000 to make his digital maps capable of depicting exact locations of calls from wireless phones, a prospect that won't become reality unless lawmakers establish a 911 fee for wireless communications.

“The technology is there,” Murray said. “It’s a matter of the public-sector entities having the equipment to use the data and the cost of getting it out there.”

‘Pretty cheap insurance’

Denney said Douglas County only needed to spend another $10,000 to $20,000 to have its computer system ready to handle the location and identity information from wireless calls. The big question for him is how to pay the additional operational costs, which could stretch to $85,000 a year, depending on how new rules and regulations take shape.

Having fees on wireless phones, he said, would allow the county to upgrade potentially life-saving services at a relatively low cost.

“That’s pretty cheap insurance,” he said.

Chapman, the dispatcher, just wants more information at her fingertips. She wants to help, and the data from wireless calls would speed her ability to get assistance to the people who need it.

“Especially when all the college students are here, a lot of people are unfamiliar with this town,” she said, after the last of seven consecutive wireless calls came into the dispatch center Thursday afternoon. “They don’t know where they’re at. If we had this technology, we’d know where they’re at.”