911 on a cell phone

[randy41]

i read a bit about this. i want to get rid of my land line. my cell service here is excellent. i read that there is a phase 1 call tracing which identifies to the 911 operator what tower the signal is coming from. kind of useless out here. then there's phase 2 that identifies the location within 300 meters. not sure that i would ever make a 911 call without being able to say my address but the added security couldn't hurt. the land line ties right to my address. there are (at least at the present time)no crime issues here. 911 would be for rescue squad or fire department.
anyone know anything more about this? i might call the sheriff's department and see what they say.

 

[tcartwri]

You need to give them your address and the nearest major cross road. They are very accustomed to locating you this way. With up to 30% of the population without a land line now, they have had to adapt. We are one of those families, and we are rural.

 

[Stimw]

I just dropped my land line and signed up for a Verizon Wireless Home Phone. The total cost is $20. a month plus taxes!
I have caller ID, unlimited local and long distance and some other features that I forget.
The only draw back that I have found is I can't use a FAX machine and it won't support medical devices. (which I don't need, YET)
The unit is portable, you can take your home phone with you when traveling as long as there is cell service and you can plug it in to power. (it does have up to 8 hour battery back up)
If you disconnect your home wiring from the grid you can connect to the box and have normal home phones.
I even Ported my phone number which I have had for 15 years.

 

[grsthegreat]

Well, i dropped my land lines 1-1/2 years ago. I have a friend that works as a 911 dispatcher in Idaho, and she tells me they can track cell signals just fine. They have actually located lost hikers with this system many times.

In a few years i see a total demise of landline residential phones. Mine was costing me $45/month for nothing. all i got were sales calls during dinner time. dont miss it at all. I only hung on long enough due to my business needing fax. Well email took care of that need.

Also, my wife worked for verizon for 10 years, and then they were bought out by Frontier. Less than 1 year later, everyone at that verizon shop were fired,and the work went east to be taken care of by part time workers making 1/2 what my wife was paid. Then the Chairman of Frontier gave herself a multi million bonus for her efforts at cost cutting. Nearly everyone i know has dropped their land lines. I only hope frontier goes broke.

 

[IXLR8]

Most cell phones have GPS built into them, and when you make an emergency call the phone will send your GPS coordinates. My 5 year old flip phone has GPS and has the option to include GPS info with all calls or just emergency calls.

 

[Bird]

We have AAA membership, and in fact our homeowners and auto insurance are with AAA. I've forgotten the wording now, but earlier this year they asked if we wanted them to be able to track our cell phones' location if we called for emergency service. In other words, if we should need AAA service, we should not have to know the address or location to give them; they'll already have it. They were asking permission to do that, and of course, I told them I'd be glad for them to do so.

And I've called 911 a couple of times from my cell phone and it did give me the proper police department for the area I was in. I was able to tell them where I was, but at least they already knew what city I was in.

 

[dmccarty]

Most cell phones have GPS built into them, and when you make an emergency call the phone will send your GPS coordinates. My 5 year old flip phone has GPS and has the option to include GPS info with all calls or just emergency calls.

This will only work if you have the GPS turned on and the local 911 system can handle the information. The enhanced system will provide a location that is 164 to 984 feet from the cell phone! That is a pretty large distance, which in a city or built up area, could include dozens of homes. Even in our sorta rural area, being off by 900 feet could have first responders on roads that do not lead to our place.

We seldom have the GPS turned on both for security and to get longer battery life so if we were not able to talk, dispatch would not have a good fix on our location. One of our kids dialed 911 by mistake and a deputy showed up at the house. We are sorta rural and the only reason he came to the house is that we had talked to him a month or so previously about some trespassers. He only knew which tower had gotten the 911 call and that tower is within a mile of the house so he checked on us. However, there are likely 50-100 houses within a mile of that tower. In this case, the 911 call was made from an out of use cell phone so their was no linkage to an address and the officer made a danged good guess on where the call originated.

My understanding is that if we dial 911, then dispatch SHOULD see the address linked to the cell phone number, which in our case, is our house. So if we are home, the 911 service is working at the latest levels, and/or we have GPS turned on, then dispatch SHOULD be able to figure out were to send the first responder.

We have kept our land line for backup and 911 service. We have DSL so we have to have the land line anyway but we do not use the service for phone calls. The price has been going up and the wifey called up the phone company, and long story short, the company reduced the price by about $25 a month.

Later,
Dan

 

[grsthegreat]

This will only work if you have the GPS turned on and the local 911 system can handle the information. The enhanced system will provide a location that is 164 to 984 feet from the cell phone! That is a pretty large distance, which in a city or built up area, could include dozens of homes. Even in our sorta rural area, being off by 900 feet could have first responders on roads that do not lead to our place.

We seldom have the GPS turned on both for security and to get longer battery life so if we were not able to talk, dispatch would not have a good fix on our location. One of our kids dialed 911 by mistake and a deputy showed up at the house. We are sorta rural and the only reason he came to the house is that we had talked to him a month or so previously about some trespassers. He only knew which tower had gotten the 911 call and that tower is within a mile of the house so he checked on us. However, there are likely 50-100 houses within a mile of that tower. In this case, the 911 call was made from an out of use cell phone so their was no linkage to an address and the officer made a danged good guess on where the call originated.

My understanding is that if we dial 911, then dispatch SHOULD see the address linked to the cell phone number, which in our case, is our house. So if we are home, the 911 service is working at the latest levels, and/or we have GPS turned on, then dispatch SHOULD be able to figure out were to send the first responder.

We have kept our land line for backup and 911 service. We have DSL so we have to have the land line anyway but we do not use the service for phone calls. The price has been going up and the wifey called up the phone company, and long story short, the company reduced the price by about $25 a month.

Later,
Dan

the gps in the phone does not have to be turned on for 911 service...it even says so in my manual. my 911 operator friend told me the same thing.

never asked aqbout the accuracy in terms of feet...but they have told people which way they should walk to get out of the forest when lost... they ask the caller to talk and walk, and they can guide them. thats pretty dang accurate as far as oim concerned.

 

[deepNdirt]

On my cell phone even when my phone is locked, there is a 911 icon on the screen that reads emergency calls,
so I guess if I were found unconscious and someone happen to locate my phone they could still call out to 911,
come to think of it....If my memory serve me well, I could do this with the first bag phone I had 20 years ago,
and I'm one who dropped the land-line as well, however still needed to have Internet service through their Broadband,
I wound up having to pay more for a stand alone Internet service then it was when having it package to a land-line phone service, The strange thing is the phone company still allows the receiving of land-calls (FREE), but to dial out cost 10c per minute,:confused2:

 

[randy41]

On my cell phone even when my phone is locked, there is a 911 icon on the screen that reads emergency calls,
so I guess if I were found unconscious and someone happen to locate my phone they could still call out to 911,
come to think of it....If my memory serve me well, I could do this with the first bag phone I had 20 years ago,
and I'm one who dropped the land-line as well, however still needed to have Internet service through their Broadband,
I wound up having to pay more for a stand alone Internet service then it was when having it package to a land-line phone service, The strange thing is the phone company still allows the receiving of land-calls (FREE), but to dial out cost 10c per minute,:confused2:

so this is my situation where i have a package deal with the local phone coop to provide phone, tv, and internet. i lost interest in tv and hardly watch it so that's gotta go and i never use the land line. just will continue to pay for the dsl service. but i'm gonna wait until after the super bowl. the dsl alone is $10 less a month than the dsl with local phone service package. entertainment can all be streamed these days.