F. U. Shakespeare
07-14-2003, 02:22 PM
About ten years ago, I checked my phone messages to find a message from a neighbor. She said the police had come to my house in response to a 911 call that day.
The call had been dialed when I was at work. I live alone, so this was disturbing, to say the least.
A few days later, I was telling this story to my then-boss (who volunteers with the local police department doing tech support).
He asked me, "Do you have a really old cordless phone?"
I said, yes, it was mid-80's vintage.
He replied that early cordless phones had a feature that they would dial 911 when the battery died. He had been on a number of such false alarms. (I am not asserting this as truth, only stating what I heard from someone who seemed to know their stuff).
Fast forward to last weekend: a colleague had the same thing happen. The police who responded to the 'call' said it was probably one of his cordless phones. However, they didn't stipulate 'early' cordless phones -- which made sense, since none of my colleague's cordless phones are more than three years old.
My long-winded, multi-part question:
1) Is it true that some cordless phones dial 911 spontaneously?
2) If so, is it just a bug? Or was there some misguided reason for it?
3) If so, which technologies and models do this?
Apologies if this has been covered before -- my search was unsuccessful because '911' falls below the four-character search criteria.
The call had been dialed when I was at work. I live alone, so this was disturbing, to say the least.
A few days later, I was telling this story to my then-boss (who volunteers with the local police department doing tech support).
He asked me, "Do you have a really old cordless phone?"
I said, yes, it was mid-80's vintage.
He replied that early cordless phones had a feature that they would dial 911 when the battery died. He had been on a number of such false alarms. (I am not asserting this as truth, only stating what I heard from someone who seemed to know their stuff).
Fast forward to last weekend: a colleague had the same thing happen. The police who responded to the 'call' said it was probably one of his cordless phones. However, they didn't stipulate 'early' cordless phones -- which made sense, since none of my colleague's cordless phones are more than three years old.
My long-winded, multi-part question:
1) Is it true that some cordless phones dial 911 spontaneously?
2) If so, is it just a bug? Or was there some misguided reason for it?
3) If so, which technologies and models do this?
Apologies if this has been covered before -- my search was unsuccessful because '911' falls below the four-character search criteria.