Re: 911 service center troubles [Telecom]

In the mid 1960s NYC oganized all police dispatch (let's not talk

>about fire...) into one office, using a single seven digit phone >number. >(Ok, you old timers, dust off those memory cells.)

{dusting off old rusty memory cells and showing my real age}

440-1234. ;-)
Reply to
jsw
Loading thread data ...

When I was growing up in suburban Boston circa 1955, I noticed that the police departments in the area had -1234 as the last four digits of their phone numbers.

Reply to
Richard

When I was a kid, only the city of Chicago had modern emergency call center staffed with police dispatchers who also handled fire/rescue/ ambulance calls, routing them to fire dispatchers. This was one of O.W. Wilson's modernizations.

The suburbs typically had separate numbers to call for police and fire dispatch. Often, it was NNX-1212 for police and NNX-2323 for fire/rescue/ambulance. I don't recall any combined call centers. Even after a few suburbs got 911, there was no intelligent routing of calls to the correct dispatch center based on political jurisdications. More often than not, every subscriber was routed to the same call center for the entire NNX despite the prefix including more than one jurisdiction.

A lot of suburbs were served by fire districts whose boundaries didn't follow municipal lines, so still another jurisdictional complication. And a number of suburbs had part time police coverage, with the sheriff's police providing overnight coverage.

It's too bad there was never an attempt to reserve line numbers nationwide for police and fire emergency calls based only on the last four digits of the line number. 911 is fine, but sometimes the built in assumptions will route the call to the wrong police or fire jurisdiction in an emergency if the emergency is in one jurisdiction and the caller reporting the emergeny uses a phone assumed to be in another jurisdiction. I like the idea of being able to choose the correct dispatcher to call, reducing errors.

With 911 implementation, a lot of the old emergency numbers were simply eliminated. It would be a rather good idea to have maintained both.

In my area, before cellular 911, the toll highway authority implemented

*999 from cell phones. You call their dispatcher and tell them what jurisdication you want, or the tollway dispatcher would figure it out based on the location the caller describes. They were generally familiar with all major local highways and were quite good at figuring it out from the motorist's description. Cell phones never had a concept of a lcoal operator, not than many still existed in the '70's and '80's.

I still use this today, rather suspicious of cellular 911 routing.

Reply to
Adam H. Kerman

Before 911, Philadelphia used 231-3131 as the police number. After

911 came in, they said 911 was to be used for critical emergencies while the 231-3131 number would stay for more routine police business. But eventually the 231- number was discontinued.

There are non-"life threatening" calls that the police must handle, but 911 operators seem very annoyed at receiving them. For example, it's 10 pm and a traffic signal is dark at a busy intersection causing problems. Or 'fender bender' car crashes or nuisance issues like loud parties.

Reply to
hancock4

In one area that straddles a state border, cell phone 911 calls often end up to the wrong state. But the 911 dispatchers simply quickly 'transfers' the call to the proper center, so it's not a problem. I don't know if all 911 centers can do this call transfer, but with cellphones I assume it's quite easy for a distant tower in another jurisdiction to handle the call.

I wonder how many 911 centers are properly equipped to handle GPS. Unfortunately, their operation is considered 'security' and details are not forthcoming.

Reply to
hancock4

Once again, TWIAVBP (The World Is A very Big Place). In other words, the brain dead policies in one area aren't necessarily replicated in another. (But rest assured, they'll have their own).

In NYC, for example, "911" is, indeed, the number to call for "fender bender car crashes". The tow trucks [a] are dispatched under contract arrangements with... the NYPD.

[a] the various tow truck companies place bids for contracts on the limited access highways, and the winner gets all calls for that area for the duration. In other parts of the city the tows are sent via a "rotation" deal.

On the highways you, as a disabled motorist, are limited to using the "authorized tow". On a regular city street you can, if you wish, call a different service directly.

as a side note this was how I was able to verify that my Omnipoint GSM phones could, indeed, handle "911" (and "112") calls with the SIM card removed. They could also route "08", but that one needed a SIM in place. I never had a chance to try "999".

Reply to
danny burstein

This seems to be prevalent in all cities. I know there was a controversy with the Providence Police Department and a certain towing firm who got all the towing business in the city. The smaller tow operators made a major stink about that.

***** Moderator's Note *****

A song by the late Steve Goodman comes to mind:

To me, way, hey, tow them away, The Lincoln Park Pirates are we, From Wilmette to Gary, there's nothin' so hairy And we always collect our fee! So it's way, hey, tow 'em away, We plunder the streets of your town, Be it Edsel or Chevy, there's no car too heavy, And no one can make us shut down.

"The Lincoln Park Pirates"

Reply to
T

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.