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Toddler dies after family calls 911 on internet phone

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Chibi_Neko
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01 May 2008, 8:31 am

I pains me to say this, but it was bound to happen sooner or later.

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A Calgary toddler has died after his family's 911 call via an internet phone service reached a call centre in another city, leaving them waiting for an ambulance, officials said Wednesday.

The family, located in the north end community of Coventry Hills, called the emergency telephone number Tuesday night after discovering the 18-month-old boy unconscious and having trouble breathing. They used a service that transmits calls over the internet.

Their call was answered by a call centre not in Calgary but in the city where their internet phone service provider is based. It's unclear why, but the call was not forwarded to Calgary's 911 call centre.

The family waited 15 to 20 minutes for an ambulance, then asked a next-door neighbour to call the emergency phone number from his land line. An ambulance arrived less than six minutes later.

The toddler was pronounced dead in hospital.

The head of Calgary's Emergency Medical Services, Tom Sampson, said the family did nothing wrong, and his heart goes out to them. He said EMS wants to know why 911 operators in Calgary never received the family's call.

"We need to understand how this connection did not occur and what we can do to ensure that this issue is addressed, not only here in Calgary but frankly across Canada," he said.

Officials remind anyone with internet telephone service to verify the 911 policy with their providers.



cbc.ca

I work in this industry, and you have no idea how many people flock to get internet phone! It is astonunding how a cheaper serivce ranks people in while they egnore the realities of the serivce.

VOIP is as reliable as the internet service, which to me is not reliable enough to count on it as a phone service. Internet goes down far more often then a regular line does, and I know this from a technician's point of view, which is why I say people who use VOIP as their primary phone serivce is only asking for it.

The very sad thing about this situation is these parents paied for this cheap phone service with their child's life.


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larsenjw92286
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01 May 2008, 8:35 am

Wow!

Isn't that bizarre?


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slowmutant
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01 May 2008, 9:14 am

Bizarre is not the word I'd use. That story is pretty sad and pathetic. I hope those parents rethink their approach to financing a household.



larsenjw92286
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01 May 2008, 9:16 am

Why do you think they are at fault?


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juliekitty
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01 May 2008, 9:33 am

Chibi_Neko wrote:
The very sad thing about this situation is these parents paied for this cheap phone service with their child's life.


You can't say that for sure unless it can be shown that the child would have lived if the ambulance had shown up sooner.



Chibi_Neko
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01 May 2008, 9:43 am

juliekitty wrote:
You can't say that for sure unless it can be shown that the child would have lived if the ambulance had shown up sooner.


The chances would have been higher though, ambulances have equipment to aid beathing.


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slowmutant
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01 May 2008, 10:00 am

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You can't say that for sure unless it can be shown that the child would have lived if the ambulance had shown up sooner.


That is BESIDE THE POINT

The child is dead. It has already happened.

Would JKF have been assassinated if the presidential limo had been a presidential armoured personnel carrier? Doesn't matter.



Scarlet_N
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01 May 2008, 10:01 am

All of the internet phone providers make it extremely clear that you need to have another reliable method for making emergency calls. These people were careless parents. Why didn't they immediately have a neighbor call 911 just to make sure? What kind of parent just sit around and twiddles their thumbs?

The only pity I have is for the child, who paid the price.



larsenjw92286
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01 May 2008, 10:03 am

They called the number, but it just wouldn't get through to the line! It was an accident!


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M02
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01 May 2008, 10:07 am

maybe there was the same street address in the other city and the ambulance was sent to the wrong place.

I wonder if there is a way for people to test their 911 service.



Tim_Tex
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01 May 2008, 10:18 am

I've heard that 911 doesn't usually work on internet phones.


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slowmutant
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01 May 2008, 10:20 am

How about we stop making exscuses for the parents? Whatever they may have done differently is irrelevant now. After all the horses have run out of the barn, you might as well leave the barn door wide open. I think these people shoulld now dedicate themselves to making sure that this kind of tragedy never happens again. Some good can still come of this. Activism is often spurred by personal tragedy.



t0
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01 May 2008, 10:25 am

Chibi_Neko wrote:
I work in this industry, and you have no idea how many people flock to get internet phone! It is astonunding how a cheaper serivce ranks people in while they egnore the realities of the serivce.

VOIP is as reliable as the internet service, which to me is not reliable enough to count on it as a phone service.


I'm in the industry also, and your statement above is false. VoIP <> Internet Phone Service. VoIP = Voice over _Internet Protocol_. If you choose to use VoIP in a controlled environment (LAN or WAN with proper Quality of Service and redundancy paths) the reliability should match a traditional POTS system. When you're using VoIP over the Internet, then yes, you're gambling with call quality and reliability because the large backbone providers won't treat your phone call any different than any other internet traffic (YouTube, porn, etc).

It's quite likely that the major ILECs in the US will move to VoIP for some of their intermediate spans because it's more flexible that their traditional systems (which means in the future you could be on non-Internet VoIP without even knowing it).

As for the story, sure it's tragic. Of course there's no way to prove which way things would have gone if help had arrived sooner.



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01 May 2008, 10:30 am

slowmutant wrote:
Quote:
Would JKF have been assassinated if the presidential limo had been a presidential armoured personnel carrier? Doesn't matter.


Yes, because the JFK would still have insisted that the presidential armoured personnel be driven with the top down.



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01 May 2008, 10:41 am

I have an internet phone for long distance calls, but maintain a landline for this reason exactly. I feel so awful for their family.


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Chibi_Neko
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01 May 2008, 10:45 am

t0 wrote:
When you're using VoIP over the Internet, then yes, you're gambling with call quality and reliability because the large backbone providers won't treat your phone call any different than any other internet traffic (YouTube, porn, etc).


Which sadly is what many of the customers of the company I work for do. They are not educated on the proper use of this device and they take it for granted.

We had a few big internet outages, most unexpected, some planned maintenance, and customers would call us on their cellphones in a uproar that they cannot use their phones, yelling that 'what if I have to call 911?'. We have to explain everything about the VOIP to them. There is also the issue of power outages, the VOIP device we give out has a 8 hour battery, but if the outage is longer then that, you are out of luck.... this is why I think people who get rid of their regular line in favor of VOIP are in trouble. Anything to save a dollar.

Come to think of it..... I assume that parents didn't have a cellphone, seeing that their VOIP failed them they could have used a cellphone.


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