• UppitPuppet@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Towers aren’t specific to any single phone company, if you stop paying for your phone service entirely, you can still dial 911. It just hits off the nearest tower.

    • ji17br
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      9 months ago

      I was under the impression that a company (AT&T) owns the tower, and they can lease out connections from that tower to other providers. They are also required by law to route 911 calls for free, but I can see a scenario if they botched the routing where 911 would not be accessible from that tower.

      • RedFox@infosec.pub
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        9 months ago

        They don’t always own the tower. Like everything in America, another company fronts the cost, att pays them for tower use. And the other carriers. It’s a business model.

      • UppitPuppet@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        That makes sense. I wonder how many AT&T towers were affected. To my knowledge, no one in my area on the east coast was affected if they tried calling 911, just standard numbers.