Advanced Mobile Location

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Advanced Mobile Location (or AML) is a caller location technique in case of an emergency.

It was developed in the United Kingdom by British Telecom, EE Limited, and HTC as a solution to problematic caller location in emergencies. When a person in distress calls the emergency services with a smart-phone where AML is enabled, the telephone automatically activates its location service to establish its position and sends this information to the emergency services via an SMS. The services uses either GNSS or WiFi depending on which one is better at the given moment. It is estimated that this technique is up to 4000 times more accurate than the previously used system.

Google announced in July 2016 that all Android phones in the world, from Gingerbread OS version onwards, now include Advanced Mobile Location (AML). Google calls their implementation Emergency Location Service (ELS).

AML is being implemented in the UK by an increasing number of smart-phone manufacturers and mobile network operators: BT, the mobile networks EE, O2 and Three, together with HTC, Sony, Alcatel, and Samsung handsets, have already successfully implemented AML. Apart from the UK, AML is fully deployed in Estonia, Lithuania, Belgium, Iceland, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand and the state of Lower Austria. Moreover, around 10 countries around Europe are testing AML as a solution to problematic caller location in an emergency with the aim of deploying it by the end of 2017.

AML automatically turns on mobile data on the headset (which may lead to charges to the user), automatically contacts Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers and sets date, and sends IMSI/IMEI over unencrypted (but invisible to the user) SMS message.

There are many success stories coming from the use of the technology, such as the one from Lithuania, where a young boy saved his father's life thanks to AML.