Your phone will go to the 911 operator based on the cell site (tower) the call originates from. The location can be identified to within 50 to 100 meters, provided that your handset is GPS-enabled. At least one carrier requires all phones on its network to be 911 GPS compliant.
Standard work-related disclaimer: none of this is confidential or proprietary information, and is available to anyone who asks.
That said, I don’t miss having a landline one bit. If it means I don’t receive any collect calls from jail, so much the better!
But if you are unable to communicate beyond dialing 911, will they be able to locate you? 911 knows my address when I call because it pops up as connected to my land line. Unless things have really changed – and I’ll be delighted to hear they have – 911 does not have that information when I call in on a cell phone. And they don’t necessarily know my service provider to get the information from, either. 50 to 100 meters is a lot of houses in my neighborhood.
This is true in the US, as well. If it turns on and gets a signal, it can dial 911.
Re: the OP… we went landline-free some time back. No regrets whatsoever.
In my experience, if I’m unable to communicate beyond dialing 911, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to get to a house phone anyway. When we had them, we were constantly misplacing the handset, or leaving it downstairs. If I can get to a phone to dial 911, I can probably dial 911 and at least make it out to the street before I collapse.
Certainly, landline 911 service has the edge on cellular 911 service for the reason you mention. But, the odds of that situation with those circumstances is so slim, it’s not worth me having a landline for.
I’d rather not gauge my chances at assistance based on how far I think I can stagger before I collapse. And ISTM that if you consistently misplaced the handset or left it downstairs, you can just as easily do the same with your cell phone. It isn’t like it magically harder (or easier) to keep track of.
And it is for me, and for my borderline-eldery parents. It’s that whole “mileage varies” thing.
You might want to have a landline if you have kids and plan to leave them at home with a babysitter. In case the sitter needs to contact you or call 911, and doesn’t have a cell phone, or lost it, or the battery’s dead, etc.
If your cell phone gets reception in your house, the GPS should work indoors also. I had to call 911 last Saturday (neighbor was beating his girlfriend) and I called from in my home on my cell phone. The phone goes into GPS tracking mode as soon as it connects. When you hang up from 911, it disconnects (unless you have yours set to GPS track all the time)
I made the switch and ditched the landline back in 2003…The final straw at the time was when i moved into a new apartment and got a new number and it had apparently been recycled from a lady with a bit of a problem paying her bills on time. I was constantly getting calls from collection agencies who simply refused to believe that I had no idea who this woman was. It was particulary noticeable after an extended business trip…I returned home and the voicemail was completely full of “ma’am, you need to call us now regarding…” calls. This caused me to rethink my need for the landline. I was using cable internet and was already giving the mobile as primary number anyway, for being on call at work, etc. I realized i had mostly been keeping the landline out of habit. No more.
I have never regretted the switch. The closest I came was earlier this year when I was getting DirecTV installed…the website makes it seem as if a landline is an absolute necessity for getting service/updates/“billing”/pay per view. The installer was awesome and set this straight…its necessary for pay per view from the remote but thats about it. The DirecTV installed perfectly well and works fantastically with no landline in sight.
No regrets. I even have my apartment security/intercom linked to my cell phone, so I can talk with and buzz people into the building if I’m not at home.
My only issue is with poor reception when I’m at work, but considering I work in a building of solid concrete, it’s not surprising.
Why not just turn your phone off if you don’t want to answer it?
But what if someone cuts your landline? Watch any any horror movie, that is the first thing the bad guys do. There will always be a “what-if” and I don’t know if that is enough reason to keep a landline.
I haven’t had a landline in a long time and no regrets here. All it got were telemarketer calls so it was dropped like a hot potato.
Make sure your location records are accurate. The linked article is about someone with a VoIP line, but if you are using a cellphone in place of a residential landline, and it doesn’t auto-locate itself, it might be a good idea to inquire about just what happens when you dial 911 on it.
If I carry my cellphone and have it turned off, I feel like an asshole for not having it turned on. If I just leave it at home, I have the built in excuse that I forgot it at home.
Is this a joke? A teenager losing their phone or letting the battery go dead strikes you as an outlandish “what if” on par with a serial killer attack? You must not know many teenagers.
But then you’re the asshole who left his phone at home!
Seriously, I have rules that I only answer the phone if I want to, and if I recognize the number. The phone is there for your convenience, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to carry it or answer calls if you don’t want to. Since either they’ll call again or you’ll call them back, it works out to the same thing whether you have a landline, leave your cell phone off or at home, or decline to answer calls.
I think that the fear over 911 access is way overblown. Having both a cell phone and a land line does add redundant safety in the case of being at home and having to dial 911 and not being able to speak and being alone and being able to get to the land line phone, or in the case where weather or disaster disrupts one phone network but not the other.
But, think about 20 years ago, when almost no one had a cell phone. All the same arguments applied to “just” having the land line. If the lines go down, or if you’re away from home, or if lots of other things happen, you’d be screwed. Yet very few normal people carried around CB radios with pre-recorded emergency messages, which could easily have been done for less than $30/month.
Nobody stressed about it then, because it was natural to only have a land line. And, of course, having just a cell phone is vastly safer than having just a land line. In fact, being in a society in which almost everyone carries around a cell phone also adds greatly to the chance that a call will get through in an emergency. For most people, cell phones are more reliable than land lines, because a tree falling over won’t take out a cell tower. Focusing on obscure and unlikely corner cases as a justification for keeping the land is pretty silly when you look at the big picture.
Of course, there are people for whom those corner cases are applicable. People who live alone, are old or in poor health, live somewhere where the cell phone reception and service are unreliable, or have difficulty communicating over the phone in times that they might need an emergency response might do well to have a land line (or an even more dedicated emergency response service). But that’s a pretty small portion of the population.
I’ve been cell phone only for about 4 years, and I’ve been totally happy.
But it is easier to keep track of. I keep my cell in my pocket when I’m out, and usually when I’m home, too. I’m a heavy user of it, for both personal and work reasons, so my cell is typically always on me.
The main reason we haven’t dropped the land line is hospitality for guests. I’m the designated hostess in my extended family, so all holiday and birthday gatherings are here. My parents, his parents, out of state cousins, friends and siblings all come to visit through the year, and people generally feel awkward using someone else’s cell phone, but not using a landline. Mom can happily gabble away for an hour on my landline and not tie up my accessibility.
I like having the home phone answering machine to vet calls for me that otherwise I’d have to deal with during my workday, too. I can’t really take personal phone calls at work, so the kid’s school knows to call and leave me a message about the upcoming field trip at home and use my cell number to call if he’s set the place on fire or broken a limb.
I’m surprised that I haven’t seen this listed above. I have exactly one reason why I haven’t given up my landline and won’t anytime soon. Reception.
I live in the middle of an extremely populated area, so it’s not like I don’t have the cell towers around me. Almost all of the calls I make from my cell phone are to equally populated areas, mostly suburbs of large East Coast cities. I have never gotten perfectly clear reception from any cell phone (and any carrier) to a landline, and for a large-ish percentage of the calls I make from my cell to other cells it is actually difficult to hear the other person. Until they fix these problems, I’ll never switch over entirely.
(By large-ish I mean “larger than I’d expect”. So some percentage less than 20%. Still, that’s compared to ~0% for landlines.)
