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Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

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Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#211

Post by Animats »

The regulation problem is that the "Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act of 1999", which requires carriers to support 911, predates smartphones with non-carrier software. There's Kari's Law, [1] which requires multi-line phone systems to support direct 911 (not 9-911, or diverting 911 calls to in house guards). That applied to the Microsoft Teams problem, where Microsoft Teams was capturing 911 calls but not connecting them if the user was not logged into Teams.

If the FCC went after Google on this, they could probably win claiming clear legislative intent to cover all the cases, and that a third party who insinuates themselves into the call chain has the same liability as the carrier. File a formal complaint with the FCC, and copy your elected representatives.

[1] https://www.911.gov/issues/legislation-and-policy/kari-s-law...

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#212

Post by cmeacham98 »

wpietri wrote: post #161
hilbert42 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The way I see it, this just moves the responsibility for safety to the manufacturers instead of the network." Perhaps so in the current circumstances, but ultimately it is the responsibly of the regulators to ensure the emergency numbers work. As witnessed here, a number of commentators seem to have forgotten that their smartphones are first and foremost are telephones and not playtoy computers. Unfortunately, the c…

> their smartphones are first and foremost are telephones and not playtoy computers I don't think that's true. A few years back when I was comparing phones, many reviews don't even mention how good they are at making calls. Both Millennials and Gen Z are notably phone-averse. [1][2] I think a modern smartphone is a portable network computer/camera/sensor-package, with the telephone bit being something like the human…

"Making calls" isn't a feature phones compete on - it either works or it doesn't, and I hope a review would let me know if calling was defective on a phone. Otherwise, there's no point in including information on making calls - it's a basic feature everybody who buys a phone expects to have.

It's a bit like saying "most car reviews don't review whether the car stays still when parked in a garage or not!"

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#213

Post by elwell »

I had the opposite problem with an iPhone last week: it called 911 all by itself. I was in a different room so I didn't hear any warnings. Instead, I heard the "It's the police! Open up!" accompanied by banging on the door around midnight.

Since I had recently washed the phone (it's supposed to be water-resistant), my theory is that some water got into it and was completing the contact for the side button. There's an iPhone 'feature' that does an emergency SOS if you hold down the side button for about 10 seconds. I've since turned that feature off. Unfortunately the "side button being constantly held down" problem is persisting for me, sending the phone into recovery mode whenever it turns on; I may need to scrap the phone.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#214

Post by jeroenhd »

rkangel wrote: post #74
jeroenhd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is the result of two problems. One is the fact Teams registers phone service providers over and over again, the other is that Android didn't pick the right phone account for a while. The Teams issue will cause generic connectivity issues because Teams says "I can call this number!" but then can't; the Android issue is an emergency issue because the Teams app shouldn't indicate the ability to call emerg…

I understand this, but there is still an architecture issue here: It should not be possible for installed applications (even malicious ones) to prevent calling the emergency services using the cellular network In the worst case it might try some other options first, but whatever is registered or set up the phone should use the SIM information to call on the network. The network operators have a load of regulation to…

I think we all agree it shouldn't. If I remember correctly, the code had special cases for emergency services just so this wouldn't happen.

That said, if I install a carrier's app on my tablet that enables calling and adds the necessary emergency services support, I don't see why it couldn't be used as the fallback for emergency services. Sometimes I have WiFi but no mobile signal (VoWiFi is finicky as hell) so if I need to reach emergency services, an "internal dialer only" approach would actually prevent me from getting help more than it solves the problem.

The code was buggy and not tested enough. Teams didn't specify that it could handle emergency calls. The method that sorts the apps that are capable of dealing with emergency phone numbers simply forgot to verify that the numbers in the list were all emergency capable: https://medium.com/@mmrahman123/how-a-bug-in-android-and-mic...

If I install a dialer, I expect it to be able to dial 112/999/911. I don't expect it to try to re/activate the vendor dialer I disabled, switch my system settings to give it its call permissions back, and call the number. Hell, with multiple dialers, this behaviour may even cause a loop by itself.

Bugs in the core framework can't be fixed by hardcoding specific dialers, you'll only hardcode the buggy, often barely updated dialers. Even after my phone goes EOL, I can fix problems like these by simply installing a better, fixed dialer, and that's a pretty good feature in my opinion.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#215

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

edvards wrote: post #55
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was one of my first jobs at Blackberry. It was considered the utmost priority for a call to 911 to be clear enough for the other side to hear that you are an employee at a testing facility verifying that the device does work and the other person can hear you and NOT dispatch emergency services.... Cops/EMTs show up, your firmware is junk.

How often did they show up, and who paid the fine?

Not often, and we didn't get fined (they were like three blocks down the road)

It was really bad around the VolTE roll-out because the firmwares were pretty junky at that point (like a 10-1 failure rate) so we started doing testing calling from a phone to another (working) phone before doing the emergency services call.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#216

Post by _def »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #189
dm319 wrote: post #48

I'm all over the place with pocket computing devices and remain confused. I once has an iphone. Beautifully crafted, both inside and out, but so frustratingly locked down that I was desperate to leave it behind. They have progressively opened up the platform, but it always lags behind (I remember I couldn't access the cloud storage from anything other than a mac). My favourite devices have been more alternative. E90…

Same. In the end I choose to die on the freedom hill, adjacent to the privacy hill. I wish there were more options.

Privacy? https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-privacy-dsid-analytics-pers...

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#217

Post by jeroenhd »

willbudd wrote: post #76
jeroenhd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is the result of two problems. One is the fact Teams registers phone service providers over and over again, the other is that Android didn't pick the right phone account for a while. The Teams issue will cause generic connectivity issues because Teams says "I can call this number!" but then can't; the Android issue is an emergency issue because the Teams app shouldn't indicate the ability to call emerg…

Allowing one app to register more than one phone service provider smells like an Android API bug. Allowing an unlimited number definitely is a bug. Allowing the corresponding integer to overflow and... well... do we really need to argue this point? A phone OS should never have to rely on good app behavior to not collapse like a house of cards. Much less one made by a corporation with a 71% worldwide market share.

The OS was bugged. The method that fetches the phone service providers for emergency services returned a sorted list of all service providers. Had the necessary filters been in place, the index issue wouldn't even have become a problem.

The integer overflow issue was part of a very flawed last resort branch of a piece of sorting code. It did underflow, but the underflow happened in a piece of code that basically sorted two objects by their memory addresses at that point. There was no way to recover from that, the problem should've been caught way before instead.

It's awful that code this important is this buggy, but no code is entirely bug free and hard coding behaviour would only hard code the bug further. This is a problem that can only be solved with higher standards, better testing, and better code analysis tools.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#218

Post by jerlam »

nsteel wrote: post #132

As an end user today with a Pixel 6, what am I supposed to do if I can't rely on them to get this right? I NEED 999 to work. If not for me, then the people around me. Am I supposed to go and ring 999 to test it after every major update until Google gives an actual statement on the condition of their shitty product that has failed the most important use-case? That doesn't scale and if nothing else, Google should under…

Do you have any local emergency non-999 numbers? I have saved the numbers for the local emergency dispatch numbers for the cities around me, along with the non-emergency ones. This is also where directing specific people around you to call 999 (or calling on another person's phone) is a backup plan.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#219

Post by layer8 »

p1mrx wrote: post #199

There ought to be a test number that behaves like 911 except for the "emergency" part at the end. This entire class of problems wouldn't exist if anyone could run an integration test.

I’m sure we’d then get bugs where the test number is called instead of the real 911.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#220

Post by wpietri »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #212
wpietri wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their smartphones are first and foremost are telephones and not playtoy computers I don't think that's true. A few years back when I was comparing phones, many reviews don't even mention how good they are at making calls. Both Millennials and Gen Z are notably phone-averse. [1][2] I think a modern smartphone is a portable network computer/camera/sensor-package, with the telephone bit being something like the human…

"Making calls" isn't a feature phones compete on - it either works or it doesn't, and I hope a review would let me know if calling was defective on a phone. Otherwise, there's no point in including information on making calls - it's a basic feature everybody who buys a phone expects to have. It's a bit like saying "most car reviews don't review whether the car stays still when parked in a garage or not!"

That's just not the case. Phone audio quality varies significantly between smartphone models due to variations in speaker, mic, and noise reduction. And that's before we get to fancier things like Wi-Fi Calling and HD Voice. The whole reason I was looking for that in reviews is that people had a hard time hearing me when I called from my previous cellphone, and I also noticed that some people I was talking to had much clearer voice calls than others.
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