I don't understand, why should there be a fee or anything for calling 911? "Whatch'u talkin' bout Willis!?"

Oops!.......In my entire life I've never called 911. discount my phone bill.

50 each time i call...since ive never called.

Neither. I'd like the taxes I pay to be applied to the 911 service, since this is part of the reason why they are collected. Why should I pay for it again, when I already pay for it? If I MUST choose, I'd take the $50 option, as I have only called 911 once, when I saw an animal marooned on a highway island.

I think it is a service fee that everyone should pay for. I don't want someone NOT calling because they don't have the $50.

I'd rather just pay a few bucks a month. Hopefully I'll never need it but if I do at least I'll know that it'll be trained, payed professionals responding and not dependent on me paying $50. (not to mention that with the cost involved in emergency response and health care that an extra $50 all at once is an extra $50 too much in my opinion. I'd rather be nickeled and dimed to death)

That would suck for all of the senior citizen's on a fixed income, single moms, poor people. A few dollars a month seems so little.

Neither! I think I pay enough taxes already for 911 calls to be covered. I don't want or need any more expenses!

Is this really a choice? I am already charged like 9 dollars ech month on my phone bill for 911

Just to clarify this question, and correct me if I'm wrong, shammer, some places in the U.S. have never paid a 911 fee on their phone bill. Ventura, CA is one of them and is now going to start charging a fee of something like $1.49 per phone line, per month, or allow residents to choose to pay a flat $50 if you need 911 emergency services. In my city, we have been paying 911 fees for many years. The 911 fees are used to pay the 911 center operators and to help maintain the equipment and massive databases where the the name and address for each line is stored. Ventura has always used its tax money to pay its 911 center and is suggesting that they charge residents to pay the center and use the surplus monies to hire more police officers or whatever other law enforcement they need. The 911 fee is a pretty standard thing. Currently, though, cell phone subscribers and VOIP users do not pay into the 911 system, but that will soon change, especially in lieu of the added difficulty in tracking down a cell phone used for 911. The VOIP records are also not usually listed in the 911 database, yet. This is a problem for a lot of people and the cost and man power involved to track down the location of people calling 911 has to be payed for by someone. Further, if you do call 911 from your cell or VOIP phone, it would certainly be nice if the Center knew where to send the police or ambulance. Collecting all this data and constantly keeping the ever-changing 911 data up to date requires a great deal of work by a lot of people. It doesn't happen by magic.

999 ( our 911 number ) calls in the UK are free :-) From mobiles, land lines and pay phones, I think this is the way it should be everywhere :-)

It doesn't make sense to have to pay a $50 fee each time you call 911 for every situation. It should be free to call 911, as long as you call for the right reasons. If you call 911 as a prank, then that's when I think a person should have to pay a fine. I think I would prefer the second option out of the above two, but still. I don't think either are fair if you end up in a situation where it's necessary to call 911.

911 should be gratis as it is for emergency use only.

If you are being charged the response time would have to be immediate. As you would be paying for an emergency service out of pocket.

Shammer No were still using two cans and a string, but it is free and more reliable.

CAREFUL!! They will enact the 50 dollar fee and find some other reason to keep charging you the few dollars.

I'm with AT&T and they charge 2 cents a month for 911 maintenance which comes to $2.40 for a 10-year period. At that rate it would take me 208.33 years to have paid $50 worth of fees so based on my guess that I'm going to live less than 208 years and 4 months I prefer to pay the monthly fee. ;)

wow...I cant believe anyone should have to you pay for 911 services. in the UK 999 (911) are free if it wasn't there would be so many incidents going unreported. The only plus I can see from charging for the calls is that there would be a lot less malicious calls from idiots with nothing better to do than waste emergency services time with prank calls