FCC May Stop 911 Access For NSI Phones

An anonymous reader writes: It's generally known that if you call 911 from a cell phone in the USA, you will be connected to the nearest Public Safety Access Point, whether or not the phone has an active account. This is the basis for programs that distribute donated phones for emergency-only use. However, the FCC has proposed a rule change that would eliminate the requirement for telephone companies to connect 911 calls made by NSI (non-service-initialized) phones. The main reason for the proposed rule change are the problems caused by fraudulent 911 calls made through NSI phones. Yet respondents cited by the FCC show that as many as 30% of 911 calls from NSI phones are for legitimate emergencies. The comment period for the proposed rule change ends on June 6th, 2015.

Comments

Another gift to the corporate oligarchy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another government gift to the corporate oligarchy. Now if you want access to 911 you'll have to pay Big Communications for it.

Easy solution

[ArcadeMan]

Keep 911 for real emergencies.
Add 922 for fake emergencies.

This is the message for 922:
"Thank you for calling the prank emergency line. Your prank will be recorded and the best ones will be added into a 'best of' compilation of the year. Thank you."

Putting an incentive (the "best of" compilation) will push a lot of those pranks to the new number ("Hey man! My prank was chosen! I rule!") and those compilations could be sold as profit to help pay for both 911 and 922 services.