Not sure how it is where you are, but here in TN all phone lines (even those disconnected) allow you to dial 911. Just plug a phone into the wall jack and pay for no service.

Similar problems abound with cell phones. Because morons are accidently calling 911 with them, or because the idiot doesn't know where they are at when they call they have caused a huge increase in dispatch times, uncleared calls, and taking time of the dispatcher away from a real emergency. Of course the solution via government is to put a tax on cell phones. Why can't a disclosure paper be included that states the person could be fined for miss-calling 911 and state the fact that they can not be traced to a point of origin. One dispatcher I talked to got into a 10 minute argument with a guy because he said they could triangulate the signal and find the accident, nevermind the fact that a town of 12,000 can't afford that technology.

You're right on the triangulation. Only larger cities can afford the technology. It works pretty well, so does the cells with gps units in them , but again the town has to pay for that as well.

Not likely to happen in the near future.

Where did all this emergency crap come from? There used to be no 9-1-1 and things worked okay. When your time came, your time came, and you died.

Now there's a big government involvement in addition.

Every ten minutes there's another siren somewhere in earshot, some self-important organization or other saying it's an emergency, everybody get out of the way.

It's sort of like mobile handicapped parking.

At Boeing last week we got a letter delivered to EVERY desk with a VoIP (several thousand). The letter included a sticker that stated that 911 operators "might" not be able to determine the exact origin of the call. We had to put the sticker on the phone; we received an email the next day and had to go to an internal web site and click a personalized acknowledgement that we were aware of the issue and had put the sticker on the phone! Removal of the tag can get you fired.

Damn bureaucrats.

Just think of how much money Boeing had to spend to handle this dumb shit -- in offices occupied by engineers and technical assistants (a generally smart crowd).

Yeah, and I would imagine that is only the tip of the iceberg for compliance costs for a company like Boeing.

I guess I should add the kicker to the Boeing situation: Prior to getting the VoIP phones we were on an internal exchange system (most of the company still is); with the internal system someone on the outside would only see the "Boeing" number -- NOT the number on the internal number making the call. With the VoIP system the computer that is directing the calls not only has the internal phone number, it has the building number, row and column in the building and name of the person assigned that desk (the name part shows on the phone when you receive an internal call).

So when we had a system that could not possibly tell a dispatcher where the call came from -- no problem (and this is probably common for most internal systems). Now we have a system that at least has the possibility of pin pointing the call and .gov requires warning on pain of being fired and the company being fined.

As I said before: DAMN bureaucrats.