Enhanced 999 Facility for Mobile Phones
The UK's telecoms regulator, Ofcom has welcomed work carried out by the UK's telecommunications sector in developing technology that will help the emergency services to locate people calling the emergency assistance number, 999 from their mobile phones.
Enhanced location information will mean that callers in unfamiliar surroundings can be located and reached more speedily by the Fire, Police, Ambulance or Coastguard services.
The system has been developed by the UK's mobile operators - O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone and 3 - and by BT and Cable & Wireless, the companies that connect 999 calls dialled from mobile phones to the emergency services.
The initiative was directed by Oftel, the previous telecommunications regulator whose responsibilities have now been assumed by Ofcom.
Peter Walker, Senior Adviser for Ofcom's Technology Strategy group, said: "Ofcom welcomes this joint initiative by the telecommunications sector. More than 43 million 999 calls are made each year and more than 50% of those are from mobile handsets.
"The enhanced service represents a major step forward in helping the emergency services to respond to calls from mobile users as speedily as possible."
The capabilities of the new system were today being demonstrated to representatives of the emergency services in London.
The system has been developed because mobile users are not always able to readily identify the place from which they are making an emergency call, particularly when phoning from a vehicle to report an incident on a motorway or other road system.
The new system will allow approximate locations to be identified by control rooms as calls are connected. It will also help in the identification of hoax callers.
Fixed line callers already benefit from the facility. A previous study of location information on fixed line calls showed that, on average, 30 seconds could be saved in the despatch of emergency vehicles for each call.
The enhanced system would also apply to the European Emergency Number, 112."
Posted to the site on 16th January 2004
