The number's up for 999. And 911. And 000. And 111(theregister.com)
theregister.com
The number's up for 999. And 911. And 000. And 111
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/03/the_numbers_up_for_999/
32 comments
I can't be the only person to think the correct universal number should be 0118.999.88199.9119.725...3
I sang this as I read it. Good to know those brain cells have been put to good use the last few decades.
Apple has started with this "Use Emergency SOS via satellite on your iPhone" https://support.apple.com/en-us/101573
The solution is to require tech companies to do something?
I don't know what rock they've been living under, but generally speaking putting requirements on companies appears to just mean that they agree and then don't do it.
Unless there is confidence that reneging on requirements would come with consequences this seems like a dead idea.
I don't know what rock they've been living under, but generally speaking putting requirements on companies appears to just mean that they agree and then don't do it.
Unless there is confidence that reneging on requirements would come with consequences this seems like a dead idea.
The article has a link to another on The Hill indicating that American 911 is a patchwork and not nationwide…
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3561535-its-time-to-r...
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3561535-its-time-to-r...
The article links to [1] which says
> Nearly half of the 80,000 calls received daily by BT operators in the UK do not involve requests for help.
I would never have estimated such a high quote of unnecessary emergency calls.
And that‘s a fun fact
> Experts chose 999 rather than 111 for technical reasons. In pre-optical fibre days telegraph wires rubbed together in the wind and transmitted the equivalent of a 111 call
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20090302014433/http://www.btplc....
> Nearly half of the 80,000 calls received daily by BT operators in the UK do not involve requests for help.
I would never have estimated such a high quote of unnecessary emergency calls.
And that‘s a fun fact
> Experts chose 999 rather than 111 for technical reasons. In pre-optical fibre days telegraph wires rubbed together in the wind and transmitted the equivalent of a 111 call
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20090302014433/http://www.btplc....
The “dial” on a rotary phone broke the connection in rapid sequence a number of times corresponding to the number dialed. If your dial broke, you could place calls by “flashing” the “hook” the right number of times with pauses between.
You could do the same with a touch tone phone, too.
Heck, you could do it with a pair of alligator clips at a punch down panel. The telco was fun before everything went digital.
For fast connection in time of emergency, calling 999 (or worse 000) on a rotary-dial phone seems tortuous - '9' - followed by several agonizing moments as the dial returns to its resting position, only to have to repeat it two more times?
Touch-tone dialing makes all the emergency numbers O(1) instead of O(N).
Touch-tone dialing makes all the emergency numbers O(1) instead of O(N).
The standard pulse rate is 10 pulses per second. So 999 takes a bit more than 3 seconds to dial. Three seconds is no doubt a long time subjectively in an emergency -- but it is still much shorter than what it replaced -- calling the full number for the the police/fire/hospital, or asking an operator to connect you.
Also in the olden days, call setup and tear-down could take quite a while. Digits to forward and relays to toggle. It could be easily half a minute before the other party started to ring, especially at peak times.
Also in the olden days, call setup and tear-down could take quite a while. Digits to forward and relays to toggle. It could be easily half a minute before the other party started to ring, especially at peak times.
I believe the reason that 111 was chosen in New Zealand was because, on the analogue network, '1' was a 'long pulse', where-as '9' was a 'short pulse' (think about how long the dial takes to rotate back to its start position for each number). It was considered more likely that telephone cables swaying in the wind and touching would trigger emergency calls if the emergency number was 999.
Edit: Corrected to 111 for New Zealand, as helpfully pointed out.
Edit: Corrected to 111 for New Zealand, as helpfully pointed out.
Brits went with 999 because it was easy to convert payphones from allowing 0s to be dialed for free (allowing users to call the operator) to allowing 0s and 9s to be dialed for free. In the UK, the system was that X pulses would be sent to send the digit X (10 for 0). NZ was using British exchange equipment that would recognize three sets of nine pulses as the emergency number, but NZ dial phones used the reverse convention (10-X pulses) so that mapped to 111.
000 is used in Australia
111 is used in New Zealand
It was a feature not a bug. 999 is the least likely to be made in error, and you even had time to stop the dial in the middle of that last 9.
[deleted]
Could they use the smart phone's gps to send out their current location?
[deleted]
There are quite a few different approaches taken - see Location Determination: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_911
Recommending satellites may have seemed plausible in [2023], but not when it is reposted the week after a major solar flare (CME).
One killer app for Starlink is solving the problem of contacting emergency services globally like what they're doing with T-mobile.
How very British. It's a nobal idea, for the parts of the world where calling emergency services is useful. where there even are emergency services, where emergency services aren't the police coming to shoot your autistic brother or black friend. as the article points out, the problems at this scale are psychological, and I don't know that we're still able to deal with that kind of problem given how we handled covid.
[deleted]
Ah, yes. Let the perfect be the enemy of the good, or the better. Let imperfection stand in the way of improving things in any way, because someone (in a blatantly virtue signal-y way) brought up a hot button issue: police brutality.
I’m really not sure what your comment stands to add, beyond useless whataboutism.
I’m really not sure what your comment stands to add, beyond useless whataboutism.
[deleted]
ah yes, virtue signaling. I'm sorry you live in a world of liars and pretenders and no one is ever genuine. sounds kinda terrible there.
>satellite
Rain happens. AM radio works everywhere. And a receiver is dirt cheap.
Rain happens. AM radio works everywhere. And a receiver is dirt cheap.
The article glibly glosses over the requirement for line of sight (or at least low attenuation) to satellites, but a great deal of emergencies happen in places where you will not be able to connect to a satellite emergency system. Frankly a 100% satellite based system is a complete non-starter.
From TFA: "... and if you can see the sky, you're good to go."
And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass when it hops. Anyone that has used a SPOT or InReach satellite device knows it doesn't take much tree cover to make a satellite connection difficult or impossible. As just one example, there are plenty of places on Cougar Mountain near Issaquah, WA that have a dandy cell connection, but it would take minutes (possibly many) to get a satellite message sent. And that's using a low-bandwidth text message, not a voice call.
Also TFA: "Aviation and maritime people know this, which is why they use satellites." You know what you don't see a lot of when you're boating or flying a plane? Trees and cell towers. Perhaps there's another reason, El Reg.
And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass when it hops. Anyone that has used a SPOT or InReach satellite device knows it doesn't take much tree cover to make a satellite connection difficult or impossible. As just one example, there are plenty of places on Cougar Mountain near Issaquah, WA that have a dandy cell connection, but it would take minutes (possibly many) to get a satellite message sent. And that's using a low-bandwidth text message, not a voice call.
Also TFA: "Aviation and maritime people know this, which is why they use satellites." You know what you don't see a lot of when you're boating or flying a plane? Trees and cell towers. Perhaps there's another reason, El Reg.
This section of the article is what chilled my blood more than a little ....
"... giving Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and whoever that they include emergency universal comms on their satellite constellations to get permission to fly, and we're good. Emergency call services are very low bandwidth, which is very cheap, very power frugal, and very reliable to add to high bandwidth satellites and low cost devices on the ground. Because we're talking universal standards here, we can bake in solid location detection that we know will work. You can build the user bits into standalone devices or as part of a mobile phone, as long as it's a simple one-button activation."
... what gave me pause for concern was the thought that an otherwise obvious idea with a cheap and easy solution runs the risk of establishing Elon and Starlink into one of those "Too Big / Too Essential To Fail" types of corporation.
"... giving Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and whoever that they include emergency universal comms on their satellite constellations to get permission to fly, and we're good. Emergency call services are very low bandwidth, which is very cheap, very power frugal, and very reliable to add to high bandwidth satellites and low cost devices on the ground. Because we're talking universal standards here, we can bake in solid location detection that we know will work. You can build the user bits into standalone devices or as part of a mobile phone, as long as it's a simple one-button activation."
... what gave me pause for concern was the thought that an otherwise obvious idea with a cheap and easy solution runs the risk of establishing Elon and Starlink into one of those "Too Big / Too Essential To Fail" types of corporation.