[PLUG-TALK] Screen phone "911 unavailable" warnings

Russell Johnson russ at dimstar.net
Sat Dec 29 18:24:29 UTC 2018



On 12/29/18, 10:17 AM, "Rich Shepard" <plug-talk-bounces at pdxlinux.org on behalf of rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:

    On Sat, 29 Dec 2018, Russell Johnson wrote:
    
    > I wasn't positing you received the call. I was positing you didn't (maybe
    > still don't) have 911 and you were not notified.
    
    Russ,
    
       Oh. Okay. I apologize for my assumption based on how I interpreted what
    you wrote.
    
       I thought that all mobile phones were 911-enabled; I can call that nunber
    (and once did so).
    
       But, my Treo 700p is not considered as smart as today's expensive pocket
    computers even though I can access the web if I wanted to do so, and take
    digital pictures. Guess it's semi-smart by today's standards.

They are. It's tricky with a phone without a GPS chip enabled, as they may not be able to locate you if you can dial but not talk. But 911 is supposed to connect you with a 911 dispatch center. This is what was/is failing.

In this particular case, it's my understanding that most, if not all, cellular (but not land line) calls to 911 were failing at the carrier. The backhaul carrier for most of the nation is CenturyLink. That makes CenturyLink a single point of failure for a critical system. IMNSHO, we should be requiring failover between carriers. But when one entity has a monopoly of the conduit, and others don't want to build it out, we the people lose. 

All the while, we have millions of miles of dark fiber across the nation. 

-Russ





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