In a move that has been a long time coming, Verizon has announced it has selected a vendor to help the company deliver users the ability to make texts to 911 emergency services.
With the new ability, those with speaking or hearing disabilities can have the same access to 911 as those without have had for half a century. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski applauded the carrier for the move, ... [ read the full article ]
Please read the original article before posting your comments.
I can justify this for people who genuinely have speaking or hearing disabilities, but not for the 16 year old bas***ds who enjoy texting to text the police instead of calling them.
Originally posted by ROMaster2: I can justify this for people who genuinely have speaking or hearing disabilities, but not for the 16 year old bas***ds who enjoy texting to text the police instead of calling them.
Well if they text for fun they will get in just as much trouble as if they called, no real difference...?
i was about to say why people going to have time to text 911if they get kidnapped or something til i read about this going to help people with speaking or hearing disability ... i bet people will abuse this and use it as a prank.
I am excited to see there is so much interest in this arena as I work for a start-up company that is currently releasing its own nation-wide subscription-based 911 text system by July 2012. Why subscribe you ask? Well, first and foremost, using an SMS system is fraught with some fundamental limitations as it was developed in the mid 1980?s. If you are not aware SMS is a transmission system that is sent in the space between phone calls, which means that by their very nature they must be kept concise; no more than 150-160 characters. Any messages that might be more than this limitation are split into multiple "pages" or submissions. SMS is not designed as a smart system, it doesnt recognize the order these pages are sent in although it does use shortest path first to send each page. The problem? each page being sent independent of the other means secondary pages could, in theory and practice, show up first; causing misunderstood communications.
In order to alleviate this and many other issues Internet Business Enterprises LLC has developed 911TM.com; a data gateway system that uses a hybrid geo location system to locate our subscribers in their moment of need. 911TM has developed over time as the brain child of our founder with many years spent working side-by-side with 9-1-1 dispatchers in the IT disciplines. In this time he has come to know many truths about the 9-1-1 system as a whole; for starters, the entire 9-1-1 model is financially flawed and has had inadequate funding to cover current costs let alone future expenses. Many states are currently resorting to regionalizing centers to stretch funds; even though this model was tested and failed in previous attempts with the nation?s land line phone service providers.
Our business model will actually pay participating centers to receive 9-1-1 contacts through our application; to our knowledge, there are no other system providers in that class. We would ask that you consider this a way to help your local 9-1-1 centers generate income so they can revitalize and face their futures on more certain ground. The public web page for our application is 911tm.com. If there are any questions feel free to visit our blog at or you can email me at the Public Relations department at: gfox@inetbe.com
