What is georouting and how can it improve the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline?

The Federal Communications Commission will vote this week on rules requiring cell phone carriers to route calls to the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline based on approximate location rather than phone number area code — a technology known as georouting. The current system could be more efficient at getting people in-person help if they need it, officials said.

How we got here

Right now, calls to the national lifeline get routed to call centers based on area code. So if you moved to Los Angeles but kept that New York number, you could end up talking with a counselor across the country.

That causes problems if you need to get connected with a local in-person crisis team quickly, because any local response would require going through a nearby call center.

“If someone is willing — in their moment of deepest crisis — to reach out, we better be there,” U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said during a news conference at Sycamores, a nonprofit behavioral health agency in Pacoima.

Sycamores has partnered with L.A. County to send mobile crisis outreach teams to respond to psychiatric emergencies in the region.

In a letter from last summer supporting efforts by Congressman Tony Cárdenas to implement geolocation, L.A. County supervisors pointed out that the proposed georouting method is different from the technology 911 call centers use “because it would not identify someone’s exact location but would route their phone call to the nearest call center.”

Georouting would patch wireless calls into the most appropriate call center based on nearby cell towers, not exact location, authorities said.

What's next

FCC Chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel said Wednesday that the agency would vote on final georouting rules at its Oct. 17 meeting.

If the new rules are adopted by a vote from the full commission in November, all U.S. wireless carriers would be required to make the change, the FCC said in a statement.

Two of the largest U.S. carriers, T-Mobile and Verizon, have already begun georouting 988 calls, officials said.