Cell phones are great for emergencies. Dialing 911 is great for emergencies. But the two don't necessarily work well together, as dispatchers in the past have not been able to easily locate 911 callers on cell phones.
That's beginning to change, as Rhode Island rolls out the country's first e911 system.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the wireless tracking technology called e911 can track users' whereabouts down to within 10 feet. For now, this is only available on certain Sprint PCS phones with global positioning chips built in. It will take another year before all mobile phone providers in Rhode Island have the capability.
The federal government's five-year-old federal plan to install e911 nationwide is seriously behind schedule, reports the Journal. As originally envisioned, all of the country's approximately 5,000 911 centers were supposed to have been able to track mobile phone locations by Oct. 1. The six largest wireless carriers are currently operating under a patchwork of extensions granted by the Federal Communications Commission. Significant rollouts aren't expected for a year or two, but by 2005, 95 percent of handsets are supposed to be location-capable.