I've heard that you can make a 911 call with a cell phone without service in the United States but I wonder if it's possible in Canada too. This guy recommends that you get a cell phone with a cigarette-lighter adapter cord with it. As unusual as it may seem, I've never owned a cell phone, only a paget once but I don't need it. My main question is if it works in Canada. Thank you.

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.

He didn't say 'now'. We've had it for a long time in the U.S. He was just asking if the same was true in Canada.

I'm glad to hear that it is.

Sue

Also carry one of those little battery clip to 12v jack. years ago we bought a new used minivan (that was the first mistake) and the first long trip after we got miles out of the city the whole wiring harness burned up leaving it without any electrical power and the old car phone couldn't make any calls. I bought one of those little battery clips so it worst case I could connect the phone power supply/charger to the battery.

It works perfectly with one of my older Fido phones, even without a SIM card.

If you ever decide to try it yourself, please remember : don't hang up and tell the operator you were testing if your older phone could dial 911 without being activated.

This is required by the law if i'm not mistaken, in both the USA and Canada. So yes, keep an old phone in your glovebox with a cigarette lighter adapter.

Hope this helps!

All right, good to know, thanks Bee. I wonder if recharging would work fine with the ETON FR250 radio.
Frankie

So far as I know, it is a legal requirement in all first world countrys. Provided of course the phone has a connection to a "cell." In practice that is to ensure that anyone using a "Pay As You Go" phone ( Also called pre-pay) can call the emergency services, even if they don't have any credit on their phone.
Which was not the case when cell-phones first came out.