Several years ago, I was on a bus in Virginia Beach, ultimately heading to work. I didn’t own a cell phone at the time. There was a woman slumped over in a nearby car, and she appeared dead. The bus driver assured the worried passengers that she was all right, but I doubted it.
Upon exiting the bus, I hightailed it towards the nearest pay phone and dialed 9-1-1. I described exactly what I’d seen and where it took place.
And the 9-1-1 operator asked me why, if the situation was happening in Virginia Beach, I was calling the Portsmouth (or Norfolk, I don’t remember which one) emergency line!
I told her, “I’m standing right in the middle of Kempsville Shopping Center. There’s a Kmart directly behind me, a Christian bookstore…” And I went on to list the various shops and stores around me. Eventually, she said she’d get ahold of someone in the VB 9-1-1.
But… what’s up with that? Are all pay phones so completely inaccurate when it comes to identifying their location for 9-1-1 calls? Or did Verizon just drop the ball big-time with this particular one?
Payphones usually aren’t run by the local teleco but by smaller contract companies. They buy a block of numbers for their phones that get routed thru one exchange. If that exchange is in another town, that’s where 911 thinks the call is coming from. It’s a cost saving measure done by companies that operate on the fringe of profitability (if that).
There’s a system to map numbers to locations, but it requires a monthly fee, which such companies might decide isn’t worth it.
The central switchboard and PBX network layout of many business phone systems pose a challenge for 9-1-1 systems. As ftg mentioned the 9-1-1 Automatic Location Information received by 9-1-1 centers will commonly display one address for all phones in a PBX network.
Payphones spread across a region may be set up in such a fashion. Businesses with various offices may also show a single ALI address for all phones on the network.
I’m surprised you even found a payphone nearby!! Wow. Amazing. The last time I used one was over 7 years ago, and even then I was surprised to find one somewhat easily.
I honestly never found out the outcome. I got 9-1-1 on the phone, spent precious time convincing them of my true location that might have been put to productive use (like saving the woman’s life, for instance), and, my civic duty performed, walked the rest of the way to work.