Enhanced 911 Still Not Working on All Cell Phones

911: That's a good thing, right? Well, Sprint, Alltel, and U.S. Cellular just had a combined $2.83 million in fines slapped on them for failing to equip (nearly) all customers with enhanced 911 service. E911 is designed to let cell phone carriers connect a phone number with a location by triangulating where a call originates from through the use of multiple cell phone towers.

The deadline for E911 passed way back in 2005. Back then, the FCC required carriers to ensure that 95 percent of subscribers had handsets that would work with E911, but Sprint had managed to hit only 81 percent as of a few months ago. Alltel was at 84 percent and U.S. Cellular hit 89 percent. (U.S. Cellular is said to now be in full compliance.)

The problem, say carriers, is that they have to force consumers to upgrade to new handsets, which isn't easy. Some people are still hanging on to analog phones today, after all.

Progress continues according to all the carriers (Sprint says it's now at 94.7 percent compliance), but the going seems to get tougher the closer you get to 100 percent. Old Nextel iDEN phones have been tough to integrate with the Sprint CDMA network, for example.

The upshot for you? If you're using an older handset, you might want to check with your carrier to see if it's E911 capable. Carriers are offering incentives and upgrades to get consumers off of incompatible hardware, so a nice deal might be in order. 

LINK: Cell carriers fined over missed e911 deadlines