Voip Blog
Back Before There Was 911
Monday, May 12, 2008
Back before there was a 911 system, the way you got help when you need the police or fire was to dial zero for the operator. Of course, back in the 1960s when the particular movie this still was taken from was shot, human operators were required to complete many types of calls and were located in the communities that they served. Traditional 911 service was simply one of many functions local operators performed.
In the 1950s, various parties were pushing for a single number that one could dial nationwide for emergency services. In 1968, AT&T decided on the number 911, which is difficult to dial accidently on a rotary phone, and fit nicely into the pattern of other service numbers (e.g. 211 for long distance operator, 411 for directory assistance, 611 for repair).
Even though 911 service was proposed in 1968, wide deployment of the service was largely delayed in the U.S. by the fact that the operator was still there and still worked. Once AT&T was officially broken up by anti-trust actions in 1984, operator service as we knew it largely disappeared. This created a real need for a dedicated 911 service, though even today, not every corner of the United States and Canada has 911 service!
Surprisingly, dialing zero works on a landline and, even more surprising, from my AT&T mobile phone! On my AT&T phone, the service primarily exists for dialing collect calls. On my land line, I was greeted with a voice menu that allowed me to essentially do the same thing, but offered prompts in English or Spanish. You could speak to an operator, if you wanted to.
Like the operator service of old, 911 service needs to be local to a community. Each community ends up being responsible for implementing it's own 911 service. Each subscriber located within a specific community must pay a monthly fee as part of their phone bill to fund local 911 services. This is why voip.com charges $1.50 per month on applicable monthly rate plans to cover these costs.
