Thinking of dropping your landline telephone to save money? See how it could put your safety at risk

(WXYZ) - Hanging up on your landline. More people are doing it everyday as they question the financial sense of paying for their home phone and cell phone.

A new government report shows one out of every 4 families has now cut the cord on their landline phones. And it seems to be a generational thing. Among 25 to 29 year olds, almost half have no landline.

But that decision could put your safety at risk. We paid a visit to Oakland County’s Central Dispatch Center, where 73 percent of 911 calls come from wireless phones, 27 percent from landlines.

“When you get a normal landline 911 call, the address and phone number pop up automatically,” dispatcher Tonya Overman explains.

So dispatchers know immediately where to send help to. But that’s not the case with wireless 911 calls…

“On a cell phone you would get an x and y coordinate,” Overman says.

It’s location information based on the cell phone towers you’re closets to or your phone’s GPS…

Federal law requires that in 95% of calls from GPS enabled phones, the caller must be within 150 meters of the location that pops up on 911 dispatcher’s screen.
The caller needs to be within 300 meters when a caller’s location is based on cell phone towers. That may not sound far, but in a neighborhood or apartment complex, it can cover enough homes to make it difficult to find you.

You may be thinking I don’t see a problem. If I have an emergency and I’m home, I know where I live and I’ll tell the dispatcher.

But what if it’s a child calling 911. Who can forget the 911 call in Wayne County, where a young girl begged for help as her mother lay dying from a gunshot wound. But the dispatcher didn’t know where she was.

Then there was a recent case in Oakland County where a man had a medical emergency at home.

“You couldn’t understand anything the patient was saying,” Overman says. “They asked the person yes and no questions to try to get them to press the buttons.

Meantime Tanya went to work, calling the wireless carrier, for the subscribers name and address. The wireless companies will provide that information in cases of emergency. But that takes precious time.

“We were able to contact them (emergency personnel) and tell them what the address was and send them to the location and we there in time and he was able to be transported to the hospital to be treated,” Overman explains.

“There is a drawback to going wireless only when it comes to 911” I asked.

“There can be if you’re not able to speak, if you were having chest pains or difficulty breathing that you couldn’t tell us the address it’s going to take longer to get the address information,” Overman says.

Longer to get you help. For some it’s a risk they’re willing to take to save some money... For others like Fred Meinberg, who still has a landline, calling 911 simply isn’t factor for him.

“I’ve never made one in all the years I’ve been alive, so it’s not a big concern for me,” he told us.

If you primarily use your cell phone for calls, but want to keep your landline just in case of an emergency,  call your telephone company and ask for the bare bones plan, the cheapest one. If you decide to go wireless only and have kids, be sure to teach them your address or show them ways to find it, like checking mail on the counter or walking outside and looking for the address on the house.