Ok so after my own personal morning panic, I contacted a 911 person to find out why the hell I couldn't get someone to check on a possible heart attack in progress. This was very disconcerting. Many of us have given away our land-lines, and are only using cellphones now. In fact the cell carriers are promoting cells as the only phone you need.

Things you should know about 911 and our cell service.

1. Not every cellphone provider will (or can) give the 911 service the user information (like address) for a cell call. I have to assume that is a technical issue and not a privacy issue. This is insane - you should not be allowed to offer a cell service if you are not ready for 911.
2. There is no system in place to triangulate the position of a cell call. 911 can find the last cell tower hit by the phone, but that is too big of an area to quickly search and find the caller in a timely fashion. As such they will go to the address listed to the cell phone (so long as the provider has that information - see point 1 above). This danger was illustrated in the most tragic manner in May of this with VOIP service in Calgary where a 2 year old died because of a wrong address.

Clearly this situation is dangerous and needs to be changed sooner rather than later.