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Verizon To Begin Offering "Text To 911" Service
An anonymous reader writes "In a move that will likely elicit a 'why didn't they implement that sooner?' response, Verizon in the next 12 months will begin implementing a 'text to 911' feature that, as the name implies, will enable users contact 911 operators via text message to report an emergency. The feature will be particularly helpful for the hearing and/or speech impaired, and for folks who find themselves in dangerous situations where making a voice 911 call isn't advisable. Beginning in early 2013, Verizon will start rolling out the feature in various metropolitan areas before progressing to a nationwide rollout soon thereafter. In many respects, this move has been a long time coming, and something the FCC has been championing for a few years."
Now, instead of getting multiple phone calls about a traffic accident, the dispatcher can much more quickly ignore the duplicates.
This is an ideal way of sending information when you want to report that you saw something that may need their attention, but you personally don't need a response.
Because 911 operators need people to communicate with them intelligibly?
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
They really need to support sending photos.
Its a good thing SMS is guaranteed realtime with guaranteed delivery. I've never had a text show up hours after it was sent while I'm now standing next to the person who sent it. Yep, its a beautiful service, one I'm happy to put my life in the care of.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
"What is your OMG?"
I dno. Les aks'm
It's not a monopoly, it's an oligopoly. Your statement still applies, though.
This is an ideal way of sending information when you want to report that you saw something that may need their attention, but you personally don't need a response.
Presuming you can get sufficient detail in the message to make it useful. 911 Operators typically ask questions for a reason. I can just see a whole bunch of text like "I saw an accident on I-80" with no further detail in the messages. Then the operator may need to call to find out the details.
Why hasn't someone created 911 video chat for mobile phones yet. Such a feature could be life saving. Rather than someone having to explain how bad the wounds are and what is happening, they can show the dispatcher and EMTs. The dispatcher can give better advice to the victim or victim's friend and even have quick videos on how to complete the action. Meanwhile, the EMTs can use the video feed to better figure out the best course of action before they get on site. If nothing else, a face is probably more reassuring than just a voice when you have an emergency.
lol popo omw
I see your point, but if you have ever listened to 911 calls you would see that just because it is vocal does not mean it will be intelligible.
As suggested by a Facebook friend, Jordan Elliot:
"OMG! thrs lik sum GUY ty 2 brake into my house! DAFUQ!?!? LOL PLS HLP!!!"
Dog is my co-pilot.
Will they be able to make the phone only talk/text to the 911 operator till they release the "line"?
Or perhaps turn on the audio, i.e. you text "I can't talk there is a burglar in my house", and they can turn on the phone/video and listen?
I suppose they could also make it take your picture to cut down on prank calls, otherwise how do they stop people saying "someone texted it in when I put the phone down" (yes they can cover the camera, but you know they will think of the feature)
Or turn on the video so you can show the 911 operator what is happening... which would be a cool feature for voice 911 calls as well.
I for one welcome our new smart phone overlords.
-jon
How about a feature that lets you send pictures, videos, and live-camera feed to 911?
Of course you'll need both the phone and the 911 call center to have this ability.
In the interim, how about making a smartphone app that does all of this:
* call your local 911 by voice and/or send a text
* determine if the 911 call center has the ability to receive images or files, and if so, allow the phone user to send them
* determine if the 911 call center has the ability to receive live camera feeds, and if so, allow the phone user to turn the camera on
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
User: theres a hijacker on the plane
Cop: Don't you mean "there's"?
User: thats what your worried about? cant you send help?
Cop: I'm sorry, sir. I can't help you.
As a firefighter/aemt, we already get multiple, redundant calls with no information because the caller is "driving by the scene and thought you should know." So now we'll get a text message with no way for the operator to try and pull more information from the caller.
"omg im dying plz help"
So we dispatch two ALS ambulance crews, an engine company and local first responders to find some idiot who broke his toe.
0_o
Fire - exclamation mark - fire - exclamation mark - help me - exclamation mark. Looking forward to hearing from you. Yours truly, ...
This would be ideal for certain situations where you need to contact the police but where it would be ill-advised to draw attention to yourself by making a phone call.
In rural areas there is often as much "fringe" coverage where SMS works but a voice call can't complete as there is "service area". The best you can do now is to text a bunch of your friends with, "crashed in ditch on river rd, ovrtrned, brkn neck, pls call 911," and hope somebody notices.
This kind of 911 service could effectively double mobile 911 coverage in those places. That's quite sufficient a reason to put up with the whiny problems posted above.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
User: theres a hijacker on the plane
Cop: Don't you mean "there's"?
Your scenario is absurd. There's no way a cop would be literate enough to recognize grammatical mistakes.
Historically, the deaf have made use of TTY relay services(funded by some obscure telco fee or other). If you can find a herd of payphones(increasingly difficult these days), you may see one of the fixed-line units lurking in a drawer-style enclosure under one of the phones.
With cell phones, you can use a TTY unit connected to the headset jack of a compliant handset, and I assume that some phones support using the built-in text entry capabilities to communicate with a deaf relay.
(More pragmatically, given the minimal information provided by many 911 callers, and the fact that 911 services include location data, anybody capable of dialing 911 and making some sort of frantic-sounding noise can probably get a fair percentage of the benefits offered...)
The problem is that we have 6200 public safety answering points in the USA under state and local jurisdiction. Many of these don't have the funds to upgrade their equipment to receive SMS, and for a fair number of them it likely is not possible to get the funds anytime soon. That doesn't leave many options. One of the possibilities that has been raised is to implement an SMS to TTY gateway, with all the limitations that this entails.
Voice 911 services typically work even if the phone isn't provisioned for billing(I'm sure there are some models that are so sim-locked that they just won't boot or similar; but US GSM handsets with the SIM pulled can usually still make 911 calls if there is a network available, as can CDMA phones that have had whatever the equivalent de-provisioning done to them), so I would assume that 911 texts would also work without charge, and would cut through any text blocking.
It seems to me that another important use case is 911 in remote areas. Your reception may not be good enough for a voice call, but it may still be good enough for a text.
Location accuracy isn't good enough just to make a voice call and hope for the best without further communication. A case like this was recently documented by the Seattle authorities, where the location was off by four blocks, and the disabled victim was only saved by the fact that the parents were able to call 9-1-1 and give the precise location.
Most deaf and hard of hearing people do not use TTYs anymore. Many now use video and captioned telephone relay services, but 9-1-1 calls through relay services suck, to put it mildly. Call routing doesn't work well for these situations, and there are many documented cases of introducing 5-10 minute delays before the call is finally connected to the emergency responders. Compare that to sub-10 second response times for the majority of voice calls.
It's funny how infrastructure gets privatized based entirely on how recent it is.
Water, sewage, roads, and postal service -- existed since time immemorial, or at least since before the Roman Empire. Today: run directly by the government, more or less competently.
Electricity and heating gas -- existed for a little over a hundred years. Today: run privately by a government-designated, very tightly regulated monopoly. Anecdotally, I have more complaints with my electric company than the city water bureau.
Telephone, cable, landline internet -- existed for less than a century. Today: privately-run, less regulated duopoly (at best). Consumer complaints: fairly high.
Cellular voice/data -- existed for a couple decades. Barely-regulated private kleptocracy; every provider sucks in an individual, unique way.