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At least in vehicle infotainment systems, we test 911 functionality EXTENSIVELY. It's a major part of call testing, because dialing 911 overrides all sorts of lockouts and exercises code paths that aren't otherwise well-covered by testing.

Usually there's a hidden config register where we can change "the number for 911", so for some portion of testing, we'll set that to "Chris's phone" and inundate a coworker with calls, but once we've been through a shakedown with that, it's time to coordinate with the local PSAP and identify a slow time when they can field some real test calls from us.

There are all sorts of safeguards here -- they want a regular phone number for one of the testers, so if the test phone malfunctions in any way (say, calls complete but audio doesn't open), they can reach us out-of-band. And it's always perfectly clear that they can cancel the activity at any time, if enough real 911 calls come in that they don't have spare operators for our testing.

It's been a long time since I was on the carrier side, but I remember doing tower turn-ups, we'd also place one test call per carrier-sector, to make sure the location info was transferred correctly. Similar coordination but it was largely a formality because it was usually just 3 or 6 calls, and very brief ones at that.

In the instant case, both the phone maker (Google) and the carrier (unsure) should've exercised this in their acceptance testing. Since it sounds like a Teams bug, it's understandable that they didn't catch it, but also unacceptable that Teams could interfere with the ability to dial 911. Since we've now learned that apps can interfere with that, this hugely balloons testing requirements until/unless they fix the OS so apps cannot interfere.



> At least in vehicle infotainment systems, we test 911 functionality EXTENSIVELY. It's a major part of call testing, because dialing 911 overrides all sorts of lockouts and exercises code paths that aren't otherwise well-covered by testing.

When I worked at Motorola doing mobile infrastructure, you couldn't even merge your code into a release candidate branch unless it was tested against emergency calls, for all the reasons you listed (plus more).

We used giant attenuators screwed on to the antenna plugs because everything had to be running at full power to ensure that it was as life-like as possible. Every once in a while, though, someone didn't screw the attenuator on tight enough and the emergency call would be picked up on the real mobile network and the fire department would show up in our parking lot.


I'm sure Google has more testing for 911 than you have. There are billions of devices running on Android.


and yet, here we are. google is trying to play down a monumental f-up of their own doing in allowing an app to hijack (and ignore) 911.


Where are they playing it down? I know it's easy to blame compagnies. OP open a post on reddit saying that 911 does not work, did he contacted Google support? No.

There is most likely an issue but we don't really know what it is. how do you know it's not on the Verizon side?

Most likely half the 911 calls in the US are made from Android phones and we never heard of common issues.


from post: "I also contacted Google already, but haven't heard back. Also shout-out to whoever pointed me to the FCC as I'm filing the too. Google Support reached out to me through here -" (not contain all sentences)

he had contacted Google support, but unfortunately, he do not get response now.


any response other than 'this is a bug in android and we are working 24/7 to release a fix' is playing it down. this is the emergency number. kids in kindergartens learn songs about calling 911 or 112.

i know it isn't a verizon problem, because google tried to blame teams.


"Because this issue impacts emergency calling, both Google and Microsoft are heavily prioritizing the issue,"

I don't know your definition of playing it down.




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