Galaxy S24 failed to connect to 911 during emergency – owner initially blamed T-Mobile

Sometimes, it all depends on how fast you can call 911 – and that’s the worst time for your phone to fail at connecting with the nearest cell tower. Naturally, one can blame it all on the carrier – and that’s what a Reddit user by the nickname of “UniversalBasicIncom3” did.

But they weren’t right to do so, as fellow Reddit users pointed out.

Is it T-Mobile’s fault?

In a thread titled “This should not happen”, the user says they were in an emergency situation. The Galaxy S24 owner could not get through to 911 despite three attempts. Even after restarting the phone on the third try, the call still failed to connect.

Fortunately, another person nearby was able to place the call instead. The experience left the owner both frustrated and shaken, especially since they believed that emergency calls were supposed to connect through any available cell tower. At the time of the incident, the phone reportedly showed full signal strength with the 5UC indicator active.

The phone could be to blame here

Right away, several users suggested the issue likely stemmed from the phone itself rather than the carrier, noting that even devices without SIM cards should be able to make emergency calls. The original poster then asked if that meant they would need a new phone, adding that regular calls worked fine, but 911 specifically would not connect.Another commenter agreed that the phone was at fault, stressing that all phones should be able to reach 911. Someone else suggested checking the device settings or contacting technical support.One detailed comment clarified that while a phone can connect to any tower for an emergency call, if the SIM is valid and the device is within range of its carrier’s network, it will not switch to another provider’s tower to complete the call. In such cases, if the carrier experiences a network issue, the emergency call may fail to go through. The commenter added that such outages have happened to all carriers before, sometimes affecting only certain areas but occasionally spreading more widely.

It’s a bit ironic

Literally some hours ago we told you about T-Mobile’s latest safety move and how it’s making its satellite-powered Text to 911 service available to everyone at no cost. This means that even users on Verizon or AT&T can reach emergency services through text when outside traditional network coverage.

It’s a bit ironic that this user experienced 911 connectivity issues at the same moment…

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