NEW EMERGENCY NUMBER 112 : TRAI wants GPS to be mandatory in all mobiles

Sector regulator TRAI today stood by its proposal of a sunset date for making GPS mandatory in all handsets, which can help find out exact location of the caller in an emergency.

The proposal was rejected by the Department of Telecom (DoT), saying there is a major percentage of low-cost handsets with subscribers which do not support GPS and the impact of enabling all mobile phone handsets with GPS may be studied before taking a call on the issue.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in April came out with recommendations on making 112 as the single emergency number.

TRAI proposed implementation of public safety answering point (PSAP) based integrated emergency communication and response system (IECRS) in the country, which will be accessed through a single emergency number 112.