911, was You're all over thinking this (was: Re: Vonage Selects TCS For VoIP E911 Service)

Mon Jul 25 11:18:10 UTC 2005

On 25-jul-2005, at 12:54, Brad Knowles wrote:

>>  <rant> And why should the UK change its numbering system just  
>> because
>>  a few dumb Yanks who can't be bothered to learn local customs? Does
>>  999 get through to the emergency services in the NANP? Does 112 work
>>  on non-GSM phones? How about Australia's 000? </rant>

>     It would be nice if everyone in the world could agree on a  
> single "emergency services" number, which would work when dialed  
> from all types of communication devices.

This makes no sense at all. Here in the Netherlands we changed from  
local numbers (which were great, dial 222333 and I'd actually get a  
The Hague fireman on the line, but finding the phone book first when  
attending an out of town emergency is of course less than desirable)  
to a country-wide number (06-11) in the 1990s, and then to the  
European number 112 (which I'm sure is costing lives as we speak: you  
first have to hold for a stupid OPERATOR whom you have to TELL what  
service and where you want to talk to and then AGAIN hold for the  
actual service). They knew 112 was in the works when they changed to  
06-11, BTW.

Anyway, my point being: the current numbers have been drilled into  
our subconscious very effectively. Throwing that away woulde be an  
amazing waste of time and money.

What should happen instead is that everywhere, the most common ones  
are made to work as additional CNAMEs for the local one.

This whole "single number" hype should end anyway. 10 years ago the  
Dutch phone company had at least five different numbers: for b2c  
sales, b2b sales, outages, billing and so on. Now they only have one  
number but you have to waste time navigating through a "voice  
response" maze. That's not what I call progress.

Oh yes: </rant>