Hypothetically speaking, if someone is living in New York and they call 911, how does the call not go through a hospital in Los Angeles or other city from another state? How does the call automatically transfer to a local hospital in the area one lives in?
In: Technology
I’ll add on here, so typical cell phone triangulation is done using the 3 closest towers to get a “general” location. Phones now have a more information they can provide which 911 systems can take advantage of, pedometer, wifi hotspots, gps, things like that. Which make services like Rapid S.O.S work
For home numbers the carriers provide 911 with that information via ani,ali information. Where as with cell phones a clearing house is involved. I would give the name but it changes often.
With voip providers it’s whatever information you put in with the company (think vonage,skype) so keep that up to date.
When you dial numbers on a phone, there’s a gizmo on the other end of the wire that decides “where” to send it. The gizmo is local to you so it knows when it gets 9 followed by 1 then 1 to send the call to the local 9-1-1 dispatch.
If you had started dialing 720 or 303 and you were in Denver, the gizmo would know it was about to route to somewhere else in the Denver metro area. The next numbers help figure out exactly where. If you dialed 719 instead the gizmo would recognize this as everywhere else in CO and the rest of the numbers would determine where.
Or if you dialed 712 the gizmo would know to route to a part of Iowa.
Different numbers for country codes and so on.
The numbers go to the phone tower, the phone tower is under a specific emergency service and they get the call. There are mixups all the time next to borders due to the call going through the nearest tower.
Since I don’t get cell signal at home and rely on WiFi I had to input my address into my phone so when I call they get my address that way.
Latest Answers