CHENANGO COUNTY - The Chenango County Sheriff’s Office Communications Division has added enhanced capability for locating 911 calls who are using a cell phone to seek emergency assistance.

According to Chenango County Sheriff Ernest R. Cutting Jr., finding callers who dial 9-1-1 from a cell phone has been a long standing challenge as the location information is delivered by the cell carrier, not from the actual device the caller is using. Cutting said depending on terrain and cell service strength, caller locations could be anywhere from a few feet to many miles away from where the person is actually located.

“Nearly 70 percent of the 911 calls we receive are by cell phone now,” said Cutting in a statement. “But with our rural terrain and limited cell service, locating calls can be challenging at times for our dispatchers.”

He said in October 2018, the 911 Center began using new technology available at no cost from RapidSOS to locate callers based on device location, helping to solve the long standing problem of, “why can Uber find me but 911 can’t?”

He added that the service was groundbreaking, but required dispatchers to manually query a database for each number that came in.