911 phone

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shputnik

Senior Member
Location
Utah
Occupation
Expert wirenut installer
Customer wants a direct dial 911 phone. Is there a special connection needed or is it a special phone?

Thanks
 

GoldDigger

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Placerville, CA, USA
Occupation
Retired PV System Designer
It can be either a special line which automatically selects 911 at the central office or a special phone which autodials 911 when it goes off hook. In the latter case the line will also be restricted to local calls, even if the user tries to bypass the dial mechanism in the phone.
 

hbiss

EC, Westchester, New York NEC: 2014
Location
Hawthorne, New York NEC: 2014
Occupation
EC
Customer wants a direct dial 911 phone.

That's nice but the local authorities usually prohibit such things. Normally the phone dials a monitoring service that will direct the call to 911 if it really is an emergency to cut down on false alarms. The phone line should be a dedicated (not shared with anything else) regular phone line. Normally the number dialed is local or an 800 number so there is no need for a long distance carrier.

-Hal
 

Rampage_Rick

Senior Member
Sounds like the people who put 911 on speed dial... The whole point of 911 is that it's simple to dial; making it even simpler causes a surge in the number of false alarms (pocket dialing, etc)

Get a regular line with toll restriction (no long distance calls permitted)
Get a regular phone
 

don_resqcapt19

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
retired electrician
Are we talking about a phone that is connected to some type of an alarm system or about a phone that a person would pick up and it would auto-dial 911?
If it is the first then most 911 centers would not permit that, but unless the system is making a lot of false calls they would never know. Some centers have a special number for alarm systems to call in on, but most alarm system go to a central station monitoring service and someone from the monitoring service would call the 911 center. I am not a fan of central station monitoring because while most monitoring centers do much better than what the NFPA standard requires, the NFPA standard permits up to a 4 minute delay on "re-transmitting" the alarm to the 911 center.

While we can't prohibit the use of central station monitoring, our 911 center strongly encourages a direct connection to our center via a radio system. We do prohibit alarm systems from calling in on our 911 lines, but we have no way of knowing if a system is set up to do that until we start getting false calls from the alarm system.

If the phone in question is a phone that is physically used by a person our rules would not prohibit that phone from being an auto-dial phone. As long as that phone is not in a location where the handset would be getting knocked off the base and the phone would be calling 911, I don't see an issue with using an auto-dial phone.
 

mgookin

Senior Member
Location
Fort Myers, FL
...

If the phone in question is a phone that is physically used by a person our rules would not prohibit that phone from being an auto-dial phone. As long as that phone is not in a location where the handset would be getting knocked off the base and the phone would be calling 911, I don't see an issue with using an auto-dial phone.

Very good point. As long as it requires a human to initiate the call, it should be fine.

Alarm systems which auto-dial 911 are not legal here. What you describe in the cited paragraph is not an alarm system auto-dialer.
 
Does the buisness have a phone system? if so what type. many phone systems can be programmed for either a hot dial button or will program a phone like a ring down circuit that starts the call as soon as handset is lifted.
 
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