New E911 Service May Actually Delay Phone Calls To 911

from the not-its-intended-purpose dept

There's been an ongoing struggle to get the various wireless carriers to offer E911 functionality, so that police can quickly determine the location of a caller. However, a glitch in the way Verizon Wireless set up their E911 system means that some callers may experience a series of two second delays when calling 911 as the phone tries to pinpoint the callers location. As you might imagine, a two second delay on an emergency call can be quite a lot. The problem is unlikely to happen in most situations - only in cases where it's difficult for the GPS to get a read on the location. However, that probably isn't too comforting to the few people it will impact. Verizon is working to fix the problem. Sprint is quoted as saying they fixed this same problem last year, so it's obviously not a new issue. This seems like the type of issue you would try to solve as early as possible.

2 Comments | Leave a Comment..