I can't help but ponder upon the irony that a ruling intended to make people aware of how the service may not work as they believe could result in the service being withdrawn altogether, so they won't be able to place ANY call.
To hear the fuss, it kind of makes me wonder how anybody ever managed before 911.
I know when I was down in Georgia around 1992/93 there were still quite a few of the more rural counties which had no 911 service at all, so it's not as though we're talking about ancient history either.
- Paul
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Also see the news report in this issue from Reuters which stated that several VOIP carriers, including AT&T, have filed an emergency request for a further extension of time from FCC.Like yourself, I do not know how people managed to get by from the start of dial or automated telephony until (in most communities) the advent of 911 back around the early/middle 1980's ... Does anyone remember when the standard that AT&T set up for the operating companies called for police emergency to be (prefix)-1313 or (prefix)-2121 and fire emergencies to be (prefix)-2131. In large cities such as Chicago, where there were many exchanges and calls were routed automatically through internal telco switches they often times used POLice-1313 and FIRe-1313. In cases where there were two separate and distinct communities (each with own PD or FD) but sharing one phone exchange, where one community was '2121' and '2131' the other community would be '2181' and '2191' for police and fire respectively. Where 911 I guess was an improvement was that when someone reported their house was on fire, they would often times be in a panic and tell the dispatcher, "help, house on fire at
3200 Halsted Street" and slam the phone down and run off (to get away from the fire), but neglect to say if firemen were wanted at 3200 _North_ Halsted or 3200 _South_ Halsted, a difference in driving of about seven miles, so of course Fire had to dispatch _two_ companies, one to each location, and at least one company came back empty-handed. That is, unless both of them came back from a dry run; it was not uncommon in those days for idiots to deliberatly call in a false alarm. In the 1960's, when it seems with Vietnam everyone was anti- everything, Chicago Fire Department in one year alone (1965 I think) responded to over six thousand deliberate false alarms. 911 pinned it down a little closer than the old system of a huge map on the wall and beehive lamps from telco which lighted up in the _general vicinity_ on the map where police/fire was needed. PAT]