Emergency 911 calls with expired SIM

[Paolo]

I look at it the same way I look at taxes. The population pays for services they may never need so that others have access to it in times of need such as health care, school taxes, and public transportation. Though I haven't gone to the hospital in several years, don't have kids in school, and drive most of the time, I'll gladly pay since our quality of life is much better knowing those services are available. I think 911 funding easily falls in that category.

Bingo!! I gladly pay for those services too even if I do not use them. oh and someone mentioned earlier the address being sent? thats incorrect. Your LOCATION is being sent, so if you are at your friends house those co-ordinates will be sent, and the system will calculate it to the closest civic address found.

[kocoman]

I have had to call 911 about 6 times in my lifetime and I always hate it, when they ask you for your name and in some cases your address and a whole bunch of other questions, so one day there was a car which looked like it was a stolen ditched in front of my house, so what I did was, I removed my Sim Card from the phone and then made the call to 911 and what do you know they knew nothing about where I called from which city I was in, what my phone number was, I provided them the info about where it was parked and the plate number.

So Yes OP you should be able to call 911 when there is no balance or expired sim, as long as you are in a Cell Phone coverage area.

I thought 911 was for life threatening things?

[jattdesi]

Well actually its not, in a lot of small minor cases they ask you to call 911. I give you a perfect example, a while ago some one keyed my car some time at night so I figured I would call the non emergency number, when I called they actually asked me to call 911 to report it. No I don't live in a small town, I live in the largest RCMP Detachment in Canada.

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note LTE running on Bell's HSPA+/LTE Network

[Stately Automat]

Don't we pay a fixed amount ($0.50 is it?) to have access to dialing 911?

If so then why are we paying for the service when someone with an expired sim doesn't!?


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Ah, but here's a deep one for you. What if the person not paying the fee was calling to report a crime you were a victim of?

[Fortissimo]

Well actually its not, in a lot of small minor cases they ask you to call 911. I give you a perfect example, a while ago some one keyed my car some time at night so I figured I would call the non emergency number, when I called they actually asked me to call 911 to report it. No I don't live in a small town, I live in the largest RCMP Detachment in Canada.

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note LTE running on Bell's HSPA+/LTE Network

It depends if it is an emergency. If you find a car ditched in front of your house and you know that it is a stolen vehicle, and it just HAPPENED! (note that it has to be JUST HAPPENED). Sure call 911 as the police might have a chance to catch the bad people. If the car has been abandoned for a longer time, and it's unlikely someone can be caught right there, then you should call the non-emergency police number. You can find that buy looking it up in your police or city gov website. If you really don't have that, at least when you call 911, then ask for non-emergency police for xxx city.

The one who told you to call 911 about "someone keyed your car" is either mistaken or didn't interpret your situation correctly. Again, is the bad guy likely to be caught soon / at the scene? Or is it not even close? You just need a little logic to know the answer.

@kocoman , 911 is not only for life threatening things. But it should be that it makes a difference if it is attended to immediately rather than not a timely matter. That is the definition of an emergency: i.e. if a bad guy can be caught right away, so he can't do more damages / now / then in the future, sure this is an important distinction.

[Fortissimo]

Back to the topic. Any phones that still work on the network (if registered, so of course not AMPS or TDMA phones today), would work to make 911 call without having to have an active registration. The US and Canada gov and many other gov in the world have mandated it as part of the licence for carriers. So carriers have to give it for free access. But carriers do get to collect a small fee to compensate for this service from their paying customers.

That's why I have told people to keep a spare / old cellphone w/ a car adapter (i.e. charger) (however, need to test it before, as some won't without a somewhat charged battery, thus defeating the purpose) in their car or glove compartment as part of their emergency plan / pack. Even though everyone has a cellphone, it might die, get lost, low on battery, or damaged. a back up is always good. And in rural areas, the phone that you have might not be serviced as there might be no network while another phone on a different network might connect.

And you don't need a SIM in it if it uses a SIM card.

[Fortissimo]

The Reason is I am calling to report a crime/problem not calling to provide my personal info.
I shoudn't have to give my personal info when calling 911, in addition to asking your name they ask you where you live and a whole bunch of other questions

You can report a crime anonymously by calling the anonymous tips line instead. Over there, you don't have to give up any personal info. I forgot what # now, but you can find out, as a matter of fact, it's often advertised here and there. Look up Crime Fighter or TIPS etc.

But for 911 calls, they need to obtain your personal info so they can get back to you if they need more details info (many reasons, to check if the story is real, or to get more details to compare notes etc). Also if there will be a charge, they need to find out the ID of the witness, which is often the caller, i.e. you. For example, if you witness a crime, you might be asked to go to court to tell your story. So they need to know who you are so they can do that. Plus, this is also to deter prank calling etc.

[Fortissimo]

We pay a monthly fee for Enhanced 911, which automatically sends address information associated with the phone number to the 911 answering centre. The e911 fee varies anywhere from $0.50/month to $1.50/month for land lines, cell phones, and VoIP lines, depending on just how much the company claims that it costs them to maintain an address database (astonishing that it can cost $1.50 per month to keep an address in a database, isn't it?). As noted above, there is no e911 feature with an expired SIM or no SIM - you would have to tell them your address when you make an emergency call. But presumably they would still get current location information for cell phones, which is probably more important.

We used to pay a monthly fee for 911, that is before there is (or even talks of e911) e911. So not just e911 is being collected as a fee. However, some providers chose not to charge 911 fees. For example: WIND Mobility, Mobilicity, PC Mobile and may be a few that I have missed.

While some providers choose to charge for 911 fees. They just update it to say it is e991 fees, but it is no a big difference here. The gov has mandated the carriers to move into e911 and the carriers have been dragging their feet and that's why e911 has come so late, and not only that, in stages (and thus confusing).

It is ironic that the carriers can build you a network that claims to deliver 150Mbps data speed, and yet they cannot deliver e911 for the longest time (asking gov to extend the deadlines etc), yet I can't see how high tech this e911 is considering today's technology. It's a joke and the gov should give them punishments. In the US, situation is about similar.

e911 is supposed to do several things: to enable the 911 centres to be able to obtain the caller's identity, location, even the call might come from a VOIP line or a cellular line, however, with certain limitations. For the longest time, they don't have that ability except for landlines.

And of course there has been this big battle as to who should pay for what part of this service / system etc, typical.

BTW, the biggest joke of all is when Bell collected 911 fees to those customers who live in northern, remote areas who don't have a local 911 centre. When they were sued and brought to court, Bell's lawyer told the judge "sure we have the right to collect the fee, and sure we don't have to provide them with 911 service as we have never promised that to them. We just collect from everyone." While the judge disagreed with Bell, exclaimed "But you bloody charge for it!".

So now you know, you pay 911 fee, but you don't necessary have access to 911. If you don't pay 911 fee, you might have access to 911. If you have a non registered phone, you might have access to 911. Confused? Yes, that's what HoFo is for.