jmulholland
As of mid-year, just three states — Vermont, Iowa and Maine — supported the service in all of their counties. Text-to-911 was available in a few other counties across the nation, but in states like California it wasn’t offered at all. So even though texting rapidly is replacing voice calls for many citizens, implementing text-to-911 service throughout the nation’s 6,000 emergency call centers will take time. Besides requiring new technology and staff training, public safety officials point out that texting will tie up 911 operators longer than a voice call, perhaps driving the need for more call-center personnel.
Wireless carriers were quick to support text-to-911, but they were less enthused with state efforts to mandate kill switches for mobile devices. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation in August requiring that the technology be built into all phones sold in the state. Minnesota enacted a similar law in May.
Proponents say the measures will curb epidemic theft of expensive mobile gadgets, but industry representatives complain that the state-by-state approach creates a patchwork of different requirements that boost consumer prices and hamstring innovation.
Despite their reservations, major manufacturers and carriers agreed to include a user-activated kill switch option on phones sold in the U.S. starting in July 2015. That didn’t quite settle the issue, however, as some kill-switch advocates argued the feature must be mandatory.
Back to the Year in Review: Making Sense of 2014
