When You Dial 911, Can Help Find You?

For 98% of the US AT&T *was* the local carrier. AT&T had a major investment in pretty much all the Bell companies with the exception of SNET (Southern New England Telephone) and Cincinnati & Suburban Bell Telephone. Except for the independents and except for GTE and Contel Bell owned most of the infrastructure in the US and a partial interest in Bell Canada in Ontario and Québec.

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No actually, I don't...

Another revelation! Is it available as an pay-extra feature?

Well, yeah, there's that, and not all callers speak the same language as the PSAP operator, not all callers are sober, and some callers are just dumber than a bag of hammers and have no clue where the hell they are until excrement occurs. OTOH, if one can simply edit their location info via a secure webpage, then that makes things a lot simpler. But there are other deal killers in the loop.

Yeah, I do, they both knew where the other was because they both belonged to the same club. A no-brainer.

Well, yeah, back when the RBOCs were owned by Ma Bell - pre-MFJ. But that was then and this is now. AT&T was not a local carrier anywhere in Texas, but they sure wanted to squirrel their way under SBC's sheets. They eventually did in major urban service areas, and SBC wound up taking several financial hits for the additional load on the power infrastructure, in-building HVAC operating costs, etc. primarily because AT&T usage fees were tied directly to their revenue stream. In most places that wasn't much.

Everything you ever wanted to know about TDOA...

Only in cell phones. It would be a waste to put GPS in an ATA :-)

Besides the other technological info given...a little practicle tip in the meantime. If one should ever be on a roadway and need to give E911 location information verbally, look around for a roadmarker. Many roads have a small metal post with unique road grid number. Seems like every

1/4 to 1 mile or so.

Believe the primary use is by road maintanence crews. I'm not entirely sure how quickly an emergency dispatcher could cross reference a road sign, or what access they have to this kind of database??

I don't think it would take long for a county works department to access this kind of info, during business hours.

- David

Dayem! I smell another business opportunity. Woo Woo!

Nope.

Maybe have people at home on call for when you need to talk? mmmmm...

Here are a few tip references for the geographically-challenged, and they would be well served to become familiar with how things are done, especially if one is too embarrassed to stop and ask for directions.

To get started, there are two different methods currently deployed to number interstate highway exits - mailpost marker system (most states) and sequential numbering system (the few remaining states).

Some will just have to trust me on this, but take it from the Roadtrip King, knowing this info has saved somebody's bacon many times, sometimes even mine.

I'm not sure there would be any purpose to having a VoIP operator.

As far as I can remember, the only times I've called the operator in the last

25 years was to ask for information that I was too lazy to figure out from the phone book: whether a certain number would be a toll call, how to dial a certain foreign country, or how to do a conference call.

I just checked: my Vonage help page does have all that info, accessible reasonably easily.

I'm interested to hear that operators can provide "remote" emergency help. But I wonder whether the regular 911 people will do that too - and perhaps more efficiently.

You sure there's still a use for an operator? The old traditional use of an operator was to plug the cord with your call on it into the right socket. Those days are long gone.

Garry

You have put your finger(s) on another issue with VoIP: you cannot place person-to-person NOR collect-calls nor ANY other type of operator-assisted call. That's one reason costs can stay low.

Actually, I don't even know if I can receive on a VoIP line a collect call. (Happily, all my kids are grown, flown and on their own.)

I'm afraid those are things of the past, too. The original purpose of person-to-person, as I recall, was to avoid having to pay the long-distance charge if the person you wanted to talk to wasn't even there. This was of interest when long distance cost an arm and a leg. Nowadays when the surcharge for the operator is a hundred times greater than the charge for the long distance call itself, person-to-person just doesn't make much sense.

Collect calls are useful from a pay phone. Or, rather, they =used= to be useful -- back when pay phones were still plentiful. Back when pay phones didn't have built-in "dial anywhere" deals. Back before calling cards were available really cheap in every convenience store. Back before you could talk to your automobile directly.

Only people I've heard of who still call collect are the prison inmates.

The kids I know that are anywhere near grown seem to have all acquired their own cell phones...

Garry

Sure, but the per-minute charge for a person-to-person call, billed over the entire call is often 10x-50x a direct dialed call. As a result, unless you're calling 10-50 times to reach the person AND only talk for one minute, it's almost always cheaper to make the call yourself.

If you are calling frequently enough for it to be worth the money, it will very quickly become cheaper to hire a secretary to make the calls for you.

So what? The technical issues of mapping a hotel connection to the hotel and room number are trivial compared to, say, determining a cell phone's location. Internet cafes, libraries, and all sorts of public access points will have the same issue. I guess they'll either have to figure it out or quit providing VoIP to those locations.

VoIP providers got into the business of providing public telephone service, but they didn't bother providing the whole package and you see the results. It's easy to undercut the other guys when you're allowed to skip the hard parts. Well, now they can't, and it's about time. All the FCC is saying is they have to quit being half-baked telephone companies and become real ones.

There are automated "operator" services in the US and Canada as well. Instead of dialling 1 before an area code you dial 01 and when you are through dialling you get a menu with prompts. Depending on the service some have you key 12 for collect (reverse charges) or for third number or calling/credit card it's all automated.

Since they started to charge for directory assistance (enquiries) here in the states I can count on one hand the number of times I've used it in the last 26 years. Heck most of the time even if you do use directory assistance they have got it wrong!

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Well, the person you call collect pays a hefty premium so you can call them. Many people even have collect call blocks on their lines in addition to third party billing block.

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