Quote from: sic0048 on March 26, 2012, 08:13:58 AM
I think my remark about 911 with location services being the defacto standard is pretty accurate. If you can find either a landline telephone or cell phone, the average person expects to be able to pick it up and dial 911 and get help. Going a step further, while they probably wouldn't be able to put this into words (we techies think about stuff like this, but the average person doesn't), they expect 911 to know where they are located without them having to know the physical address where they are located.
I am old enough to remember when there was no 911 at all. I also remember that for a long time after 911 was available, the 911 dispatchers had absolutely no idea where you were. In the "formerly GTE" territory where I live, there were several exchanges that didn't have the enhanced 911 until the mid-90's (when the switches were finally converted from the old step-by-step switches to digital). For all I know there may still be some small, independent exchanges that don't offer enhanced 911, or only started to very recently.
So the expectation that you have is a relatively new one, but as technology progresses, expectations must necessarily change. The new reality may be that the most reliable way to summon help in an emergency is by using your personal cell phone, because many newer cell phones have GPS tracking. Whereas, with all the VoIP technologies, even if a person has a commercial 911 service and sets their correct address, that doesn't mean they will remember to change it the moment they move. I know someone who has service with a VoIP provider (one of the major ones that starts with a "V") and has moved twice and on both occasions never bothered to change his 911 address. The only way I know this is because at some point he asked me to help him configure something and when we logged into his account, I noticed the incorrect former address (and yes, I did fix it for him — took all of 30 seconds).
And, I know another guy who doesn't want 911 service at all because, and I kid you not, he's afraid that if he registers with 911 some bill collectors that he's trying to avoid will find him! I can only shake my head...
So what I am hearing is that you have a particular set of expectations, and I'm just saying that perhaps it's your expectations that need adjusting given the new reality that just because you happen to see a telephone instrument sitting on a countertop in someone's home, that does not actually mean it's connected to anything that will give you useful 911 service. I would guess there are probably people who have dropped their landline service completely, but still the phone sits where it always has, just because they were never motivated to disconnect it, or maybe they just like the looks of it.
You can have all the expectations you want but at the end of the day, if you pick up someone's else phone in an emergency and dial 911, the new reality is that it just might not do what you expect it to do. You'd be far better off reaching for your cell phone, particularly if it has GPS capability and your local 911 center can receive that information. And anyway, if someone is running from house to house looking for a working phone, I'd say that makes them the one that's not preparing for an emergency. Have you noticed how thin your local phone book is getting (unless the phone company in your area does what the one in my neck of the woods does, which is to continue to carry listings for phones that were disconnected four or five years ago — I guess that's one way to try to hide the fact that landlines are becoming a thing of the past!)?
Oh, and by the way, there have been several noted cases where people with landlines either died or received delayed help because the company that manages the 911 address database either had an incorrect address or an incorrect city on file. In one case I recall, a Wisconsin man died while waiting for an ambulance that was dispatched to a city on the opposite side of a river from where he was (I want to say it was in the Appleton/Neenah area, but don't quote me on that). As I recall, he and his family could actually hear the sirens as the ambulance went to the wrong address. So even if a person has landline service from a phone company, that doesn't necessarily mean that help will be sent in an emergency after 911 is called.