January 2007
Phoning 911
Gaps despite new technologies
READY TO HELP Information about incoming calls is displayed onscreen at the Dutchess County, N.Y., 911 call center.
“Dutchess 9-1-1. What is the address of your emergency?” Every telephone call to the Department of Emergency Response in Dutchess
County, N.Y., is answered this way, although new technology can make the caller’s street address or geographical coordinates
appear on a screen.
But even at this state-of-the-art facility, one of 6,138 local 911 answering centers in the country that dispatch police, fire, and medical personnel, it’s sometimes difficult to find the people who place the calls.
That became distressingly clear last summer when a young girl called the 911 center from her cell phone while clinging to her father, who couldn’t swim, after their kayak tipped over in the Hudson River. The pair’s location could not be determined by high-tech location technology, so a dispatcher had to guide the rescue boats by conversation instead.
Despite considerable investment in 911 technology and ongoing monthly charges to many subscribers in the form of added fees or state taxes, emergency-call dispatchers still can’t depend on location data provided by phone carriers, nor can consumers. Data from wireless carriers can be error-prone, and even information from residential landlines can be wrong if not updated.
Consumer Reports’ latest reader survey on 911 service found that in the 12 months before September 2006, 1 in 8 of the respondents encountered some difficulty. This online survey, conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, also found that 1 in 25 wireless callers never successfully connected or communicated with 911. Though not a nationally representative sample, a failure rate of this magnitude would imply 4 million unsuccessful wireless 911 calls a year.
Of those in CR’s survey making 911 calls in the previous 12 months, 59 percent had done so on a wireless phone. (In a CR survey of cell-phone buyers, 29 percent said they bought the phone for emergencies.) But wireless subscribers can’t count on their calls to provide vital information to responders. Ten years after the Federal Communications Commission began mandating wireless “enhanced 911”--or E911--services, including the transmission of phone numbers and locations, nearly half of the U.S. territory is still without 911 centers that can find wireless callers.
The lag is mostly in rural areas (more than three-fourths of the American population is covered by location-capable call centers), but local coverage varies. North Dakota, for example, was among the earliest to adopt wireless E911, while nearby Nebraska has virtually no wireless 911 location capability statewide. The National Emergency Number Association, which tracks telephone services, reports that 109 counties in the U.S. still have no 911 or E911 service at all. People there still must dial a 7- or 10-digit number to summon local help.
To be found with the most accurate technology, wireless subscribers to Alltel, Sprint Nextel, or Verizon must have a handset equipped with Global Positioning System capability. Off-the-shelf prepaid cell phones report the phone number of the caller but often have no location-reporting capability and don’t give the name of the phone’s owner to dispatchers. In CR’s survey, only 1 in 8 of the 911 callers said an operator was able to find them by determining location of the phone--an essential capability in case of a dropped call, always a possibility with wireless.
Consumer Reports recommends having more than one type of phone for emergencies, including a landline phone, even if at the most basic level of service. Neither wireless nor VoIP (telephone service over the Internet) can replace landlines for reliability, even though that service also is vulnerable in calamities.
What You Can Do
In a real emergency, obviously you must get through to 911 to alert responders. Don’t hang up too soon. Several unanswered rings might not mean that an operator won’t answer: An overloaded 911 call center might be switching calls to another location.
Try 911 again. If you get a busy signal, a dropped call, or poor voice quality, as did about 40 percent of those with 911 calling difficulties in CR’s survey, try again using the same phone at the same location, or again someplace else. Or have someone else call. Those strategies were effective for most of the callers who tried them in our survey.
Know your location. Once you reach a 911 operator, expect to be asked for your address. That could be more of a problem for cell-phone callers than landline users, who are less likely to be in unfamiliar surroundings.
Be concise. Just over half of the wireless 911 callers in CR’s survey said they phoned after seeing an emergency. With several wireless users often reporting the same incident, it’s important to give accurate, succinct information for responders.
But even at this state-of-the-art facility, one of 6,138 local 911 answering centers in the country that dispatch police, fire, and medical personnel, it’s sometimes difficult to find the people who place the calls.
That became distressingly clear last summer when a young girl called the 911 center from her cell phone while clinging to her father, who couldn’t swim, after their kayak tipped over in the Hudson River. The pair’s location could not be determined by high-tech location technology, so a dispatcher had to guide the rescue boats by conversation instead.
Despite considerable investment in 911 technology and ongoing monthly charges to many subscribers in the form of added fees or state taxes, emergency-call dispatchers still can’t depend on location data provided by phone carriers, nor can consumers. Data from wireless carriers can be error-prone, and even information from residential landlines can be wrong if not updated.
Consumer Reports’ latest reader survey on 911 service found that in the 12 months before September 2006, 1 in 8 of the respondents encountered some difficulty. This online survey, conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, also found that 1 in 25 wireless callers never successfully connected or communicated with 911. Though not a nationally representative sample, a failure rate of this magnitude would imply 4 million unsuccessful wireless 911 calls a year.
Of those in CR’s survey making 911 calls in the previous 12 months, 59 percent had done so on a wireless phone. (In a CR survey of cell-phone buyers, 29 percent said they bought the phone for emergencies.) But wireless subscribers can’t count on their calls to provide vital information to responders. Ten years after the Federal Communications Commission began mandating wireless “enhanced 911”--or E911--services, including the transmission of phone numbers and locations, nearly half of the U.S. territory is still without 911 centers that can find wireless callers.
The lag is mostly in rural areas (more than three-fourths of the American population is covered by location-capable call centers), but local coverage varies. North Dakota, for example, was among the earliest to adopt wireless E911, while nearby Nebraska has virtually no wireless 911 location capability statewide. The National Emergency Number Association, which tracks telephone services, reports that 109 counties in the U.S. still have no 911 or E911 service at all. People there still must dial a 7- or 10-digit number to summon local help.
To be found with the most accurate technology, wireless subscribers to Alltel, Sprint Nextel, or Verizon must have a handset equipped with Global Positioning System capability. Off-the-shelf prepaid cell phones report the phone number of the caller but often have no location-reporting capability and don’t give the name of the phone’s owner to dispatchers. In CR’s survey, only 1 in 8 of the 911 callers said an operator was able to find them by determining location of the phone--an essential capability in case of a dropped call, always a possibility with wireless.
Consumer Reports recommends having more than one type of phone for emergencies, including a landline phone, even if at the most basic level of service. Neither wireless nor VoIP (telephone service over the Internet) can replace landlines for reliability, even though that service also is vulnerable in calamities.
What You Can Do
In a real emergency, obviously you must get through to 911 to alert responders. Don’t hang up too soon. Several unanswered rings might not mean that an operator won’t answer: An overloaded 911 call center might be switching calls to another location.
Try 911 again. If you get a busy signal, a dropped call, or poor voice quality, as did about 40 percent of those with 911 calling difficulties in CR’s survey, try again using the same phone at the same location, or again someplace else. Or have someone else call. Those strategies were effective for most of the callers who tried them in our survey.
Know your location. Once you reach a 911 operator, expect to be asked for your address. That could be more of a problem for cell-phone callers than landline users, who are less likely to be in unfamiliar surroundings.
Be concise. Just over half of the wireless 911 callers in CR’s survey said they phoned after seeing an emergency. With several wireless users often reporting the same incident, it’s important to give accurate, succinct information for responders.
| 911 cell static | ||||
| When you phoned the 911 operator, were you able to communicate successfully with the operator? | ||||
| Total | Cell phone | Regular landline | VoIP | |
| Yes, on the first try and without any difficulty | 88% | 84% | 95% | 88% |
| Had some difficulty or never connected | 12% | 16% | 5% | 12% |
