If dispatchers are to pinpoint the location of wireless callers during an emergency, Douglas County will need to install new equipment and work out arrangements with companies that provide wireless service.

Now, if Jim Denney could just pinpoint how much the service would cost.

“I’d say anywhere from $12,000 to $95,000 a year,” said Denney, the county’s director of emergency communications. “We just don’t know.”

Such a wide range of costs is injecting plenty of uncertainty into the county’s pursuit of improved 911 services for wireless communications, but help could be on the way.

SBC, which manages a 911 database for the county, intends to ask the Kansas Corporation Commission to approve a consistent fee structure for providing “enhanced” 911 data to dispatch centers across the state, including the one in Douglas County.

Instead of following the current fee model — one based on the fluctuating number of towers and antennae arrays for wireless communications in a particular county — SBC plans to propose basing data fees on each county’s population.

Such a standard would eliminate much of the guesswork feared by Denney and others, who don’t want to buy into an upgraded system unless they can bank on the steadiness of future expenses.

Phil Ryan, SBC’s area manager for E911 public safety, said SBC likely would file its application for the wireless tariff within four months. A similar application is pending in Oklahoma.

Bob Johnson, chairman of the County Commission, said he liked the idea of a consistent tariff. But such a shift still wouldn’t determine who pays all the bills.

Right now, the dispatch center’s operations are financed through fees paid by subscribers to land-line phones. Such subscribers pay 75 cents a month.

Wireless customers — unless they also have land-line phones — don’t pay any fees for dispatch services, although their calls account for nearly half of communications coming into the dispatch center.

County commissioners say wireless customers won’t be able to receive “enhanced” 911 services — most notably calculation of caller locations within 5 to 300 feet — unless wireless customers start paying fees.

Craig Weinaug, county administrator, said winning approval of such fees would be a political long shot this coming legislative session.

“I would say it’s a 10 percent chance we’ll have it in the next three or four years,” Weinaug said.

County commissioners said they would be willing to explore the possibility of assessing their own fees to wireless customers if that’s what it takes to get the job done.

“Cell phone users deserve the very best safety standards, but the users ought to pay for them,” Commissioner Charles Jones said. “Land-line users shouldn’t have to pay for safety services that cell phone users are taking advantage of. It’s not fair.”