magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Tricks

maine-iac · Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 10:41 pm Post subject: MJ and 911

Does anyone know of an actual case where MJ was used to place an emergency 911 call? And did it work as it is suppose to?

Delavan · magicJack Apprentice Joined: 01 Dec 2007 Posts: 25

My wife claims to have tried it when we had a problem here and she said it didn't work. She had a dial tone, called 911 and nothing happened. Since I wasn't here I can't vouch for it and I intend to perform a test of 911 on MJ and my other VOIP phone system sometime when I can arrange it with the local authorities. Fortunately it worked fine on her cell phone.

dan · Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2008 10:01 am Post subject:

Well if your depending on 911 via MagicJack I would suggest calling 911 informing the operator this is not an emergency. And You were testing your VOIP line. confirm the address and name show up correctly.

spamftw · MagicJack Newbie Joined: 21 Dec 2008 Posts: 2

From my understanding of VOIP, 911 probably wont work, and if it does the operator wont have any idea of where you are.

kumar · Dan Should Pay Me Joined: 15 Nov 2007 Posts: 806

dan · Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 11:46 pm Post subject:

they use Intrado for their 911 services. I have called to test out all my MJ and VOIP lines. I suggest anyone depending on MJ 100% of the time do this

davrow · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 2:22 pm Post subject: Re: My guess

kumar · Dan Should Pay Me Joined: 15 Nov 2007 Posts: 806

Well you can change it... my.magicjack.com or in the softphone i think...

Kumar

Agent_86 · Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 11:11 am Post subject: 911

Yes I've used 911, I don't know how it works exactly but I've called 911 and the local police came as I had hoped.

I called 911 a few times due to a drunken pest in the area stumbling in the highway, and another time because someone ran over a tree branch in the road, and they wanted me to pay for it because it was in front of my house. LOL so I called the cops on them for harassing me and beating on my door etc. And the cops came out.

What is the difference between MJ 911 and regular 911 ? I don't think I understand what the differences are ?

JohnnyFreightTRAIN · Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:58 am Post subject:

I have a Canadian Address registered for my MJ, so 911 is supposed to be disabled.
I did test it out using the *67 trick and it went through to my local police department in Canada. However, they told me my address was entered incorrectly.

So it does work.
But it rings for quite a while, i'm assuming because they are trying to figure out where to send your call.

mberlant · Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:17 am Post subject:

There are two main differences between real 911 and VoIP 911.

The first difference is that with real 911 the phone company is wholly responsible for registering the service address in their 911 information table. just like an extra field for Caller ID that has your address, but is only fed to the 911 dispatch center. With VoIP 911, the customer is responsible for registering the service address with the VoIP service provider (and is likewise liable for paying the fine if the address is wrong).

The second difference is that with real 911 the phone company has a direct link to the 911 dispatch center(s) (like a telephone with the real telephone number 911), and hard codes which center gets a particular 911 call. With VoIP 911 there is no such direct link. Part of the verification and registration process is for the VoIP provider (or its agent) to look up the address you entered and figure out which PSAP (911 center) should get your calls. They then go into your VoIP account and associate that 911 center's POTS phone number with your account, just like a Speed Dial entry that happens to be triggered by the code 911.

The one thing I am not quite sure about regarding MJ's implementation of E911 is that I had understood that the VoIP company had to register your physical address to your VoIP telephone number in the PSAP's computer, since it was not possible to dynamically feed the address to the PSAP with a 911 call (similar to how your cell phone looks in its directory to tell you the name of the caller). With MJ letting us switch on the fly amongst several registered 911 addresses, if more than one of these addresses is pointed to the same PSAP how would they know the difference? Maybe someone else has more insight on this.

magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Tricks

MJ and 911