Abandoned calls clog 911 in Dallas and may have led to baby’s death [Updated]

Enlarge (credit: Mike Mozart)

Update on Friday, March 17: After this article published, the City of Dallas and T-Mobile said that the problem was not with "ghost calls," in which a phone makes repeated calls to 911 without the phone's owner realizing it, but rather with abandoned calls that occur when a caller hangs up before reaching a 911 dispatcher. These abandoned calls, combined with technology shortcomings, apparently caused the severe 911 backlogs.

"The root issue stemmed from a variety of factors including Dallas' aging 911 service technology, which couldn't differentiate between calls on hold and hangups, and the way T-Mobile's technology interacted with the system and identified callers, according to Dallas public-information director Sana Syed," The Seattle Times reported.

Dallas officials previously said the problem was with ghost calls, and blamed T-Mobile for not fixing it.

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