E911, T911, and Emergency Services

Enhanced 911, or E911, is a service that allows emergency operators to provide better assistance to people calling 911 from their mobile phones.

• Enhanced 911, or E911 Phase 1, is a service that displays your mobile phone number to emergency operators as well as the location of the cellular site carrying your call.
• E911 Phase 2 provides improved location information. E911 calls from mobile phones are subject to the same limitations as regular calls from mobile phones. For example, if you’re underground or too far from a network antenna, your signal quality may be affected and you may not be able to connect to the network.

All Koodo phones are able to support both phases of E911.

Koodo E911 service is currently accessible in most of Alberta, British Columbia, the Greater Winnipeg area of Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, PEI, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, and the Greater Halifax area of Nova Scotia.

Paying the 911 government service fee

There’s a monthly provincial or municipal fee for 911 service collected by all carriers in select provinces. The amount of the fee is regulated in each province and the funds collected are used to support local 911 emergency operations centres. See the table below for the fee.

A Koodo wireless caller always gets a person when they call 911, regardless of the existence of 911 service. Callers in non-911 areas connect to the provincial police or the local telephone company operator.

Note: Landline callers in a non-911 area get a fast busy or a recording that tells them the call cannot go through but they do not connect with anyone.

For Prepaid customers

E911 fees are built into your billing already if you live in a province that charges these fees.

T911

Text with 911 (T911) is an emergency texting service for Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Speech Impaired (DHHSI) customers. T911 service is not available everywhere. Government agencies are responsible for handling emergency calls, and not all of them can support T911 service. For more information on where T911 is available in Canada, visit textwith911.ca  Coverage areas are approximate.

• The agency handling your T911 call may not be able to assist you in both official languages.
• T911 service relies on text messaging sessions initiated by the government emergency response agency receiving your 911 call.
• The availability of text messaging service is not guaranteed and is subject to the Koodo Service Terms.
• You must have an active Koodo account to access T911 service on your Koodo phone. Your Koodo phone must support the T911 service. Each phone on your account must be individually enabled for T911 service, if the user is eligible. Please allow 5 days for registration to become effective.
• Your T911 registration won't apply if you port your number to another service provider. You must re-register.

How to register

It's free to register for this service. Just text T911 to 428911 from your phone and follow the prompts. 

T911 compatible phones

A supported handset is required to use this service. All handsets currently sold by Koodo support Text with 911, with the exception of the Alcatel Go FLIP handset.

9-8-8 service has launched in the United States

On July 16, 2022, the United States launched a national mental health crisis- and suicide- prevention number that citizens can access by dialing 9-8-8. The CRTC is currently working on developing a similar resource for Canadians, but the implementation of that service is not yet complete. Until then, mobile calls and texts to 9-8-8 made in Canada will receive a recording or text reply, respectively, which will direct callers to Canada’s suicide-prevention service (toll-free number): 1-833-456-4566 for voice calls at any time, or callers can text 45645 from 4pm to midnight, Eastern Time).

For information on the CRTC’s process to develop and deploy 9-8-8 service, please click here