Your Old Cell is Perfect for Emergency Communications
Rob PincusDescription
If you have an old cell phone that is off contract (and who doesn’t?) and you can charge it, you can stage this phone for emergency use in a home-defense situation. Every cell phone, whether on contract or not, can call 911. You legally cannot have your ability to call emergency services cut off because you didn’t pay your phone bill.
How many of you have an old cell phone that is off contract that you don't use anymore in a drawer somewhere, in a box, three of them in your car under the seat, something like that? Do you know that if you have a charger for them, you can get a charger for them and leave it plugged in, that can still make a 9-1-1 call, all right? That's a legal issue inside of the U.S. You can't have your emergency ability to call a police cut off 'cause you didn't pay your bill. So you can take that cell phone that you can't do your Instagram, you can't do your Facebook with but you can plug it into the wall and leave it in your barricade area, in your safe room, wherever you're gonna go to.
So there's always a phone there, right? The days of everybody having a landline in every room of the house and every bedroom, most of us don't anymore, right? So we're carrying our cell phone around, where is it? It's on the kitchen counter, on top of the refrigerator, on top of the truck outside, I don't know where it is. Half the time, I leave it in a restaurant.
So, I'm not gonna count on it being with me when I need it. So plugging in that old phone, leaving it in the corner of the room with your medical kit, with your staged firearm, right? I don't wanna have to go over here and get the firearm and then go back over here and get my phone, and then I have a medical kit over here. Oh, I gotta go upstairs and get the kids and then come back. Now, I gotta be in every room in the house by the time I'm safe, right?
Put all that in one place, put all that one place. People talk about having a vest or a bag or something like that, that they can just grab everything and there it is, cool. But stage that phone there also.
The word perfect is a dangerous mischaracterization. Useful, possibly perfect no. Since the phone has no contract the 911 center has no way to ask a cell provider who owns the contract. This information is commonly used to give law enforcement a starting point when they lose a connection. As an example women's shelters often provide these 'free' phones for 911 purposes but when they call 911 because their abuser has found them the 911 operator may not get their name in time and law enforcement has no idea who to look for. With a contract there will be a starting point
I am a professional in the area of cellular 911. Your comments are misleading. Many older cell phones were designed for cellular networks which no longer exist or exist in only very limited areas. These cannot make 911 calls. Examples of older networks are AMPS, TDMA and GSM. Most current networks are either UMTS or LTE. More details are available from the National Emergency Number Association (nena.org).