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Skype Now Supports Emergency Calls In the US

With the latest round of updates to Skype, it was noticed today that the instant messaging and VoIP phone service now supports emergency calling in the United States.

The release notes for the most recent update to the Android version of Skype indicated that the service now allows calls to be made to US emergency calling systems via 911.  Telephony services like Skype, Google Voice, and Vonage typically don't offer this emergency calling ability without some sort of intermediate step like deferring to the phone's default dialer, as is the case with Voice, or setting up a physical address location ahead of time which is how Vonage handles it.

The indication is that Skype will handle the 911 calls natively, but when verifying with an account that does not have a Skype phone number assigned to it, it was found that the instructions in the FAQ explaining how to turn on emergency calling are not accurate.

Emergency calling support in Skype for the United States

Interestingly, the instructions page explaining how to turn on the ability to make emergency calls, also has a disclaimer at the bottom of the page warning that Skype is not able to make emergency calls.

Top of the FAQ


Bottom of the FAQ


UPDATE (January 19, 2022):  It was reported that Skype without a phone number might not be able to make 911 calls.  However, an instance on iPadOS (no cellular) was verified with the option to enable the emergency calling service, though with the acknowledgement that the service may fail if Skype is unable to send an accurate location to the emergency service provider.  In spite of two recent updates and a system restart, this Android instance is still without the option.

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