When you dial 911 in an emergency, does the call route to the geographically nearest dispatch or to the one where your phone's area code is?

@Jeruba, your phone number doesn’t matter when you call 911 from your cellphone. The call is routed to the dispatch center closest to the cell phone tower that picked up your call.

I think @bkcunningham is right, because I have called 911 when I am out of state and it always goes to the local 911. I actually had never even thought about it before.

GQ.

It goes to a central processing unit. Call on a landline if you want an operator.

Well, let me give you a real-life experience.

I was out of town for a funeral and my little nephew grabbed my blackberry (which had a “safety feature” of being able to dial 911 even if the phone was locked)

The police showed up where we were, 2300 miles from my home base.

Cellphones can now send location data; latitude and longitude, with their calls.

I called today from a Cellphone in the car. I went to a central dispatch, who then asked me what I was witnessing. They decided to transfer me to the State Police, and did not identify as representing the town I was driving through.

That is the same way it would work if you were calling from you landline in a home or business, @Imadethisupwithnoforethought. The call would go to a 911 dispatch center and a dispatcher determines where to dispatch the call based on the location (which automatically appears on the computer screen if it is a call from a landline) and they type of emergency.

I’ve called 911 from my cell phone while driving through a state other than the one I live in. The dispatcher who took the call was local, and was already aware of the incident I was reporting.

@bkcunningham is correct

A good thing to know is that the voIP numbers can not broadcast your actual location, and if you use one to call 911 the system IDs your subscriber address only.

In earlier days, calling 911 from a cell phone and getting help where you were was a problem. They seem to have solved it with more precise location features.