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Car-Accident-Advice.com 911 EMERGENCY CELL PHONES Supports
In the United States today, there are over 50 million cell phones
sitting in drawers and closets. Additionally, over 40 million cell phones are
retired for newer models every year, with most ending up in closets,
drawers or landfills.
By 2005, 130
million cell phones will go out of service annually in the United
States, and the accumulated stockpile building up in our closets and
drawers will have grown to more than 300 million, according to
estimates in Bette K.
Fishbein’s
"Waste
in the Wireless World: The Challenge of Cell Phone."
published last June by Inform, a nonprofit environmental research
organization in New York.
By law, any
cell phone that can be turned on can connect to 911. This is
always a free call and does not require a service plan or service
provider to dial. There are more than 100 different organizations in
the Washington, DC area that make free cell phones available that
have been reprogrammed for 911 emergency calls. Every organization
works independently but performs the same work to prepare the phones
for 911 use.
Each phone
must go through the following process:
- Testing and
cleaning
- Clearing of
all stored numbers
- Recharging
of the battery
- Matching
the appropriate charger for the phone
 - Reprogramming
for 911 and other numbers that the organizations require
Organizations
that need donated cell phones for 911 emergency calls include the
following:
- Police
departments
- Neighborhood
watch groups
- Senior
citizen centers
- Domestic
violence organizations
911 EMERGENCY CELL PHONES The program is
designed to provide the service of collecting, reprogramming and
donating 911 emergency cell phones free of charge to any
organization that demonstrates a need for them. A small percentage
of the phones collected will be sold to the cell phone recycling
industry in order to cover the cost of reprogramming the donated
phones.
~~From the DC
Metropolitan Police Department
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