Asshats, jerkfaces, and garden-variety idiots have finally stirred the sleeping giant -- and though the FCC
doesn't exactly have a sterling reputation of coming down hard on offenders, we can only hope something good happens here. All cellphones, tied to active accounts or otherwise, are required by law to be able to place calls to emergency services; by and large, that's a sound policy and something that's probably saved dozens of lives over the years. Sadly, though, folks have seen fit to
abuse that capability, in some cases utterly overwhelming call centers and taking away service from others who genuinely need it. A number of states have banded together and formally asked the FCC to do something about it, and this is where it gets a little messy. Does the commish repeal the clause requiring access to 911? Sounds like the wrong move, but without any sort of account linkage, prank calls from inactive handsets are difficult at best to stop, simply because they can't be traced. There doesn't seem to be any guidance yet from the feds on exactly what action they may take -- and with an issue this tricky, we don't really expect action any time soon.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ken @ Apr 29th 2008 11:31PM
Simple, just kill anyone who does this.
Problem goes away overnight.
PEZ @ Apr 30th 2008 6:52AM
I don't see a need for having 911 access with an inactive phone. Just yell for help. Whats wrong? No voice because you are being choked? To bad then. You should have stayed home that day. Oops. Now you know.
Kumar @ May 2nd 2008 2:30PM
Tell that to a battered wife who is trying to get away from an abusive stalker husband. Most cities have programs to get inactive phones into the hands of these women so that their scumbag spouses can't track them down and do them harm.
As for the complaint, perhaps these municipalities should be investing some homeland security grants in tech that can trace these calls instead of spending it on dumb things, as they usually end up doing.
That article was pretty lame quoting 10k 'fraudulent' 911 calls from inactive phones in a 3 month period across Tennessee. So, how many 'fraudulent' calls were there from other sources in that time frame, as well as home many 911 calls in total? Bad reporting.
Seth A @ Apr 30th 2008 1:19PM
I think the idea needs to stay around, however, change it up a bit. I know of many parents who give their old cell phones to their elementary aged kids to keep in their backpack in case of emergency. I think what we need to do is sell special "911 SIMs" or something like that. Say, oh, $5, tie it to mommy and daddys account. Basically, in theory, allow any phone to do it, just needing a 911 SIM card. I can see it now, a little FCC issued SIM card that says "FCC 911" on it. I think people who actually have a need for it should be able to keep it for little to no cost.
bhtooefr @ May 7th 2008 6:41PM
Pray tell, how do you expect to implement that on AMPS (hey, there are still AMPS towers,) TDMA (no TDMA towers, but guess what they fall back on? Oh, right, AMPS,) or CDMA phones?
GSM and iDEN, sure, but AMPS and TDMA use no form of SIM or anything like it, and nothing CDMA in the US uses R-UIMs.