Cell Phones Find 911 Hard to Reach
January 22, 2003
By Government Technology
YONKERS, N.Y. -- People who own cell phones, many of whom bought the devices for safety reasons, may have trouble calling 911. That's the finding from a survey conducted by Consumer Reports. Last fall, the magazine surveyed its subscribers and found that some 15 percent of the respondents had trouble connecting, including 4 percent who never got through at all.
One in three people who own a cell phone say they bought it mainly for safety. And at least one-third of all 911 calls are now made on cell phones--just under 57 million calls in 2001, according to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA), a trade group.
For most of those survey respondents who had problems with 911, a weak signal, a bad connection, or some other phone-system problem seemed to have caused the trouble. Trouble for the remaining respondents apparently involved the emergency system: excessive rings, unanswered calls, or being left on hold.
Wireless 911 calls in California seem especially problematic, according to the survey. There, nearly 12 percent of calls to 911 never succeeded; one-third of the California respondents said they encountered some difficulty getting through to 911.
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