You're all over thinking this

Thu Jul 21 14:43:02 UTC 2005

Scott W Brim <swb at employees.org> writes:
> On 07/21/2005 09:32 AM, Joe Abley allegedly wrote:
>> On 20 Jul 2005, at 21:46, Brad Knowles wrote:
>> 
>>>     In the case of regular cell phones, if you are roaming on a
>>> network in a foreign country, or you have rented a local phone, I
>>> understand that the carriers have gotten together and made sure that
>>> the various 911/112/999 emergency services numbers work world-wide, so
>>> that if you're an American in Europe, you can still call 911 and have
>>> that work as expected.
>> 
>> Cite?
>> 
>> (This isn't my experience at all ...
>
> My experience is that the mobile network operators (in Europe and the
> USA (GSM) anyway) are lumping all of these together, so that no matter
> which you dial, you get the emergency service they connect you to.
> They added to the list of "special" numbers, with a many-to-one
> mapping of number to service.

The 112 emergency number is required by the GSM spec to work at all
times, no matter what.  This includes e.g. dialling with keypad lock
enabled or without a valid sim card.  

Some phone manufacturers and/or operators have extended this to
include 911 and other commonly used emergency numbers, but I don't
think those are part of the spec.

The requirement was probably included to satisfy european regulatory
authorities who actively participated in the standardisation work in
ETSI at the time.

Bjørn