Here is a story that you need to read if you have Comcast Digital Voice (VoIP) service. I’m posting this because I have CCDV, and I hope that maybe by some chance the “internet revolution” can help change Comcast so that no one else ever experiences this issue.

According to this blog entry, the guy’s son had a seizure and he tried to call 911 (via Comcast) twice and ended up with some odd noise rather than an emergency dispatcher. The guy ended up getting in touch with medical help by calling 911 on his cell. The problem of course, is that 911 via his home phone (with Comcast).

Thankfully the guy had a cell phone. Playing the what-if game, we could really change things… what-if he didn’t have a cell phone, or what-if the cell phone was dead… granted, if you have Comcast Digital Voice (or any VoIP service), you’ll probably own a cell phone… again, this is just a what if. What if the guy had been alone, hurt and couldn’t get to his cell? Better yet, what if it hadn’t been a medical situation… what if someone was breaking into the house.

Yes, things need to change. To be honest, I haven’t even tested the 911 service with Comcast. You better believe that this evening when I get home, I am going to test it out. — Important note here, if you plan on testing 911 with Comcast (or any other service), DO NOT JUST CALL AND HANG UP WHEN THE OPERATOR PICKS UP. You need to tell the operator that you were testing to make sure the service worked, if you hang up they will spend time and money trying to call you back and possibly dispatch police and medical to your residence.

Back to the original story…. after his son (along with his wife) had been taken via ambulance to the hospital, the guy (still at home with the other son) tried to call Comcast support and get some answers. Can’t blame him there, I would have. He was bounced around from person to person and center to center.

Now, I don’t know exactly what happened, or what was said, but I can guess some of the things I would have said. Truthfully, there probably wasn’t a thing that any minimum wage call center tech could have done for the guy, even the call center supervisors were probably helpless… add that to a rabid customer, and they probably were willing to do even less than they could.

I agree with the guy on the point that this is something that should go all the way up. If the 911 service does not work, it needs to. It has to work. It doesn’t matter what the cost is to Comcast, this service needs to be in place. They’re squeezing enough out of the millions of TV subscribers that they should be more than able to pay for any necessary changes that need to be made to make 911 work.

I encourage everyone to Digg the original blog entry (not mine) to help spread the word about this.