Editor wrote:
Granted, I live in a very small town, population 8800, one phone
> exchange for the entire town, the police dispatcher responds for the
> sheriff also, and the city offices and they receive 'two or three > 911 calls per day'.
But what happens if you're in a county of 880,000 where there are a lot more 911 calls per day and they don't know everyone?
I don't know about the rest of the country, but in our region telephone exchanges, municipal boundaries, and post office names are totally separate. Some fire/rescue/police units are merged between municipalities, others are separate.
In our county, if the local town is busy, help is dispatched from the next town that is available. The problem is that a distant town may not be familiar with new streets in ever expanding suburban developments and cul-de-sacs.
You also raised an 'issue' with power. If you use a battery backup
> unit you get around any problems with power. I have heard people ask,
> but what about the DSL/cable line; their power could go out also.
Yes,
but there is a chance power could be out at the phone exchange also.
> I guess nothing is perfect.
When we have a commercial power failure, our cable TV system goes out as well. It takes longer for that to be restored than commercial power. They tell us the fibre optic cable has many sensitive amplifiers and needs more care than the prior analog coax.
As to landline phone reliability, in my many years at this location, commercial power went out a lot, but never phone service. I only remember when unavailable dial tone, which was during an unexpected extremely severe storm that drove up phone usage.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Lisa, what do you do in a case like Brooklyn, New York where by the dispatcher's own admission, "we do not answer this phone after 10 PM"? I guess VOIP would never work there, would it? I would have been sort of ashamed to admit to a member of the public that a police department (especially in New York City!) closes down its phone line at 10 PM, but I guess being brazen is what makes some public 'servants' good at their job. If a small town can arrange its police department to serve the public efficiently, without a lot of sass-back to the public they are expected to serve, then why can't your so-called county of 880,000? I think it is about time our public servants get told "either learn to do the job right and do it right -- or we will get people who can". Maybe you, or one of the other Bell System apologists in our readership can tell me why it is that VOIP carriers are expected to be the ones to have to do the twisting and turning and maneuvering to get their ways in line to make it easier for the public servants? Why do the public servants simply refuse to accept the fact that as times change, *their procedures* have to change as well? What the hell did any of those people do back in the 1960's when our nation was crossbar with no immediate ID on calls? You want a job as a police dispatcher? Then you, by-God, either get an encyclopedic knowledge of streets and intersections and addresses in your town or don't get in the way of the people who do; if your worker's "union" insists you have to have a job you are probably not qualified for anyway, is that the public or VOIP carriers at fault? PAT]