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20 Mar 2024 | 53
OMFG
im dyn. LOL
US text-to-911 emergency SMS to go live by 2014
"Omg hlp nd a dr" may soon become a familiar phrase to emergency operators in the US, thanks to a plan to enable text messaging to the 911 emergency telephone number from anywhere in the country by 2014. On Thursday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Julius Genachowski announced that the four major US mobile …
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Friday 7th December 2012 23:14 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: OMFG
SMS will often get through when there is almost no signal
There have been lots of cases where people have been rescued from the local mountains here or from boats where they couldn't get a phone signal. But since 911 can't do SMS they have had to text a friend and ask them to call 911
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/indonesia/1322755/Girl-in-Bali-sends-text-message-SOS.html
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Saturday 8th December 2012 00:24 GMT LarsG
What if
In the heat of the moment the spell checker decides to modify your text and you don't realise.
'Please help I'm at 3 bollocks to you Santa Claus bend over and take it like a germ'
Which should have read 'I live at 3 Kensington Street, Hill Side, Kensington, London...'
Can you see that there might be complications in this?
Or lots of HOAX texts?
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Saturday 8th December 2012 20:51 GMT leexgx
Re: I'm sorry
999 or 911 texts are free so cant be charged for (they have your number if your sending fake SMS 999 or 911 texts)
in the UK thought you have to Register 999 text before it works (its meant for death or hard of hearing people), but in the USA it needs to be enabled for every one due to the way gun LAWs are there
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Sunday 9th December 2012 15:23 GMT MrT
They've got *a* number...
...but just Google "sms number spoofing" to see how easy it is to fake. I haven't checked in a long while, but all the sms spam (get rich quick, PPI, accident payouts, etc) on my accounts came from fake numbers. The only time a real number was used it came via a VOIP service from out of country.
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Saturday 8th December 2012 08:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Ah, herein lies the rub. I bet the emergency services will have access to the FULL SMS framework data, i.e. originating number plus triangulation. AFAIK, triangulation works worldwide as no telco filters that out when shunting the message through the gateway, so you can be pinged from a foreign telco with a blank SMS and not know you have just been triangulated.
If you use an SMS provider, they too will have some point of network origin, so I reckon a couple of harsh convictions will sort the pranksters out pretty soon.
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Saturday 8th December 2012 13:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
so you can be pinged from a foreign telco with a blank SMS and not know you have just been triangulated
The network you're on presumably knows where you are all the time (subject to triangulation accuracy), but are you saying that other telcos round the world get some sort of receipt for an SMS they send you that enables them to do this?
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Sunday 9th December 2012 13:41 GMT Lee Dowling
The first, last and only time I was required to phone 999 for a life-threatening emergency (some gang had got a guy on the ground and - toughnuts as they were - 10 of them were kicking him in the head while he was unconscious on the floor), I got put through to a police officer at my local station. They had no clue on location, they had to dig out paper maps to try to manually find the name of the street I was *then* in (which was a safe distance away from the actual incident), and then they had to follow my directions, one-by-one, on the paper map in order to work out where the incident was.
Embarrassingly, I had a sat nav and could have given them lat/long down to the metre within a few seconds but they didn't have that capability (and nor did they when my ex got snow-logged in her broken-down car on a quiet Scottish road for hours with a baby in the back seat and no help forthcoming from the RAC. That wasn't a 999, because they were okay for a while, they just needed to be rescued at some point. I had to use Google Maps to convert the location I'd been given by my ex to a street name that they could understand - and I could pronounce! - in order to get help to her). I was calling on my mobile for the 999, but they didn't have the facility to triangulate my call (literally, 500m would have done). I had street names to hand, but they didn't even have the facility to search for them, they were looking them up in an index.
Out in the sticks? Nope, I live inside the M25 in a large town.
I have to say that, in both cases, the emergency services did a sterling job, despite relying on only basic technology. In the case of the 999, by the time I'd started my car again and got 100m down the road, I heard sirens on the way and got a return call from the officer responding. In the case of the stuck ex, within minutes I got a text that not only had the police arrived to her (taken baby and mother into their car, warmed them up, even brought them a hot drink), but that they were on the phone shouting at the RAC to pull their <censored> finger out and prioritise calls appropriately. Strangely, the RAC then arrived within minutes too.
Oh, and my ex changed her roadside service as soon as she got to her destination.
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Monday 10th December 2012 09:24 GMT Lee Dowling
Re: I thought...
112 is a pan-European version that gets through to the same line as 999 in the UK (or whatever equivalent in other countries).
Some countries, e.g. Italy, it's a bit of a nightmare to work out what's going on (three different police forces, and ambulance and fire all on different numbers) and 112 is merely a way to homogenise that across Europe.
And it still doesn't account for them not being able to take GPS, or search for streetmaps, or not even have an electronic map.
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Friday 7th December 2012 23:54 GMT Zmodem
why dont they just jump on the bandwagon and make a app that does video calls and charge the 99cents, explaining what is the matter in text in detail question after question and then pissing around taking a picture and making a picture message would take 2 hours while you mate has bled to death in the first 5 mins
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Saturday 8th December 2012 08:44 GMT Fred Flintstone
Bandwidth. I'm sure it's possible to develop emergency apps that add more data, but SMS can scrape through where voice no longer carries, and that is vital in emergency situations.
There is one caveat: SMS is a discard service (AFAIK), i.e. the data gets discarded if the cell gets too busy. This use demands a change to that policy, can you imagine the impact if 911 SMS gets thrown out?
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Saturday 8th December 2012 06:33 GMT jake
So the fucking morons who crash their cars (bikes/boards/skates/walking/whatever) whilst texting ...
...might, maybe, get some help a trifle quicker?
Great. Makes the rest of the gene pool a lot safer over the long-haul. Not.
When texting, park yourself in a quiet corner, out of the flow of traffic. Problem solved.
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Saturday 8th December 2012 08:48 GMT Fred Flintstone
So the fucking morons who crash whilst texting ...
The SMS of those people will read something incomprehensible like "jkhvhgf" because the airbag will ram the keyboard into their face and leave a nice rectangular imprint (with or without rounded corners).
This, of course, will trigger an automated accident alarm because it's obvious what just happened.
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Saturday 8th December 2012 08:53 GMT Fred Flintstone
Actually..
.. you reminded me of another category at risk.
SMS will be a problem for those who suffer an accident while enjoying some nasal matter. They will have to somehow manage with one hand if their operative hand has a finger stuck up a nostril to to the third knuckle because of the airbag going off..
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Saturday 8th December 2012 18:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: So the fucking morons who crash their cars whilst texting ...
Don't get me started on these dumb retards who text and drive, statistics have already shown time and time again that text and driving is way more dangerous then people who talk on the phone and drive and even more dangerous then drink driving!
Posted as AC due to the dickwads here who will take a strong dislike to this post because they're part of the text-n-drive problem!
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Saturday 8th December 2012 22:54 GMT WraithCadmus
Don't forget you need to register in the UK
I found today that registration follows numbers, not handsets. Always try to get people on the service if heading to the hills.
"Mountain Rescue, party of 2, 1 broken leg @ NY215072, 1 moving SSW to find signal", make sure your phone is set to auto retry, naturally.
<-- Black helicopters: At that point I wouldn't care what colour the helicopter was
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Monday 10th December 2012 11:38 GMT M7S
Re: Did you know...
Some of us have moblies dedicated for emergency call outs and NEVER used for anything else so they shoud not appear on any lists and have never been consented to. I appreciate it is not quite the same thing but close. We've been getting text spammed on these for some time now. Extremely irritating if one is sleeping, or has to pull over when driving (for example) to check if we've an active job to divert to.
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Monday 10th December 2012 01:18 GMT mrfill
Mandatory?
It may be mandatory for phone companies to have a 999 text service but it is not universal and the publicity it has received has been underwhelming. For users, it is optional as you have to register before use and any time you change your mobile number.
As at 31 May 2012, 32000 people were registered according to emergencySMS. I hope it doesn't take them as long to respond as it does to update their figures.
Between 30th June and 28th Sept 2012 they received 18000 messages.
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Monday 10th December 2012 10:31 GMT Richard Cranium
UK emergency SMS
Register here first: http://www.emergencysms.org.uk/ although originally for the deaf it's OK for others to sign up too.
Try a voice call first but in poor signal areas SMS will retry till it gets through, I believe it only needs 50 milliseconds of connection time.
Message should be along the lines of:
"ambulance. Hiker has broken leg. Madwomans stones, Kinder Scout SK137880, moving casualty towards Jaggers Clough and Haggwater Bridge A57”' - That fits into 140 characters.
The message should indicate what service is needed, nature/severity of problem, location expressed in more than one format (i.e. map grid ref and named landmarks) and anything else relevant (as in this example, casualty is being moved and in what direction).
As you cannot confirm the message has been received you should continue self rescue efforts. Taking the phone to a higher location might help to get a connection.
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