What's the REAL scoop on cell phones & 911?

Hey Rock, don't forget to tell them if you hear banjo music :E

Thank you. I feel VERY old now.
But I guess a very lucky old person who has never had to dial 911 from my old analog cell phone.

For the record I am using my phone from up North and I am WAAY South, back in a really rural area with the MH, and if you get my drift.......you'all would be asking the same question to confirm what the fire department 'clerk/fireman' said about dialing 911!

Thanks again for bringing me up to the 21st Century about the new cell phones. Appreciate it.
Rock

Yet another answer in the affirmative. If you have an emergency, do not call any number except 911.

The degree of accuracy that the call center can obtain on your call will depend upon the carrier. For example, Verizon uses a GPS based solution, where AT&T use triangulation.

GPS based solutions are very accurate, but it takes some time (up to several minutes if in an area with limited visibility of the sky) for the cell phone to acquire the necessary satellite data after the call to 911 has been initiated. So don't hang up until advised to do so by the call center.

Triangulation works much faster than GPS methods IF (and only IF) there are three or more towers receiving your signal at the same time. If not (i.e.; you are in the boonies), then the call center will get limited location information. Further digging by skilled operators and/or cell phone personal can improve this accuracy but it takes time and resources.

Lastly, your call is "usually" automatically routed to the nearest PSAP (911 call center), so no need to even worry about being out of state.

Summary: Use Verizon if you travel in areas of limited cell coverage, call only 911, and don't hang up until so advised by the 911 operator.

The chief is dead on. I do this stuff for a living. Used to be many calls went to the CHP for example.They would have to transfer. Things have been upgraded constantly. Only time some tracking may become unavalilable is during an outage. For example, a local 911 center has to transfer calls to another agency due to a problem. Know your location and give it clearly and calmly if possible. They have instant recording and can play it back with the touch of a button if cut off.

Poppa Clay wrote:
As a CPR instructor I alway tell my students that when calling 911 give your location. That includes state, city, park etc. That way in the event that you do get the wrong 911 operator who is located somewhere else they can put you in contact or they can contact the correct 911 service.
If boondocking I would think that it would be a good idea to note your gps coordinates in the event that you need to pass them on to 911 operator. This would be extreamly handy if you or someone else were hurt while outr hiking or if you become lost.

If you have your GPS coordinates, passing them on is probably a good thing to do, but if you can get a gps signal, the phone will more than likely also pick up GPS anyway and by regulation the phones GPS coordinates WILL be given to 911 regardless of what defaults you have your phone set to. The only exception would be if for some reason the 911 center can't see/log the phones GPS data, which by now should be very very rare. For at least 5 years phones have had to have a way to accurately locate the caller, and 911 centers have had to be able to be set up to view that info. The solution adopted by most,if not all carriers, is to include a GPS chip in the phone. Triangulation from towers isn't reliable enough, in remote areas, you may only be able to contact one tower.

Since there are several ways lat. and long. are shown on GPS units, it may just confuse the 911 center if the info you give is NOT in the same format as the phones. (I'm assuming the phones are required to follow one std) there is degrees, minutes, seconds, and degrees, followed by another format. And I've seen units that don't always show location with +/- from 180 degrees, ignoring the sign could get you half the world wrong!.

So, If I call 911 I'm going to not pass on GPS coordinates unless asked, just ask them if they have my GPS coordinates. If I'm out of my local area, I would give them my geographic location as best I could in case I'm connected to a non local center.

In once case we needed to call about an emergency in another state. Received a call and we needed to make sure the callers local emergency services knew about the emergency. We simply dialed 1, area code of the location we wanted, followed by 911. explaining the situation, the 911 call center connected us to the city where the emergency was and they then handled it. Don't know if this would work in all cases.

As a CPR instructor I alway tell my students that when calling 911 give your location. That includes state, city, park etc. That way in the event that you do get the wrong 911 operator who is located somewhere else they can put you in contact or they can contact the correct 911 service.
If boondocking I would think that it would be a good idea to note your gps coordinates in the event that you need to pass them on to 911 operator. This would be extreamly handy if you or someone else were hurt while outr hiking or if you become lost.

If I read the O.P. correctly, the concern isn't being exactly located, but with being connected to the right (local) 911 center instead of the "home" center of the cell phone.

As others (including the Fire Chief) have said, that concern has long been laid to rest, as I found out a couple of years ago 500 miles from home. I had to call 911 in behalf of another person and the call was picked up by the 911 operator in the county I was in at the time.

caberto wrote:
Sorry, but let me get this straight... the fire chief (who works intimately with 911 operations) tells you that you don't have to dial the direct # and 911 on your out of state cell phone will get you the local rescue, and you come to a web forum to get confirmation of the REAL answer to confirm what the Fire CHIEF told you about 911?

:B:B:B

Johno02 wrote:
I would not recommend it for everyone, but I have the GPS locate feature turned on for both of our Cell phones. I do not have any problem with people knowing where we are, and if we need to be located, hopefully someone can do it. I realize that this is a privacy issue for some, and if so, that is fine.

even if the GPS location feature is turned OFF, GPS location is given to 911 operators.

In my phone it says "E911 location service CANNOT be turned off on ANY mobile cellular phone"

you can turn it off for other stuff, but NOT 911 calls, it's always transmitted. that was a regulation put in about 10 years ago.

Trackrig wrote:
To get an accurate location, the cell towers must be able to triangulate your location. If you're way off the beaten path, there may not be 3 three or four towers to pick up signal and perform the necessary triangulation to give them an accurate location for you.

Bill

CDMA carriers (verizon/sprint etc) track location using the phones built in GPS, so if there is GPS fix, that gets transmitted to the local operator, likely in addition to triangulated location.


If the phone can't get a GPS fix, then they will likely rely on triangulation and the towers GPS location(s)

Also, yes deactivated phones will still connect to 911.