What do you mean by NOW you can make a 911 call without service? In Canada, I could do that for years... since I first went digital some 3 phones ago at the very least. It's a requirement of the service providers that access to a 911 system has to be available without a service contract. That is if there is a 911 system in place which IIRC has been around for a very long time even in rural Saskatchewan.

People have been advised to carry cell phones in their car kits even if they didn't have service as a way of making emergency calls. And it was even a selling point expressed by cell phone retailers.