[geeks] the end of the internet as we know it.

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 07:19:00PM +0300, sammy ominsky wrote:
> One of our major target markets is US expatriates, so a large percentage 
> of our customer base has no E911.

There is no official 911 in Israel. There are seperate numbers for police,
fire and ambulance service. 

GSM cell phones have a special system for making emergency calls, you do it
by calling 112. US GSM phones do the same thing by calling 911. Neither 
actually call via the usual system the calls have higher priority than any
other and will bump calls, which is never done for normal GSM calls.

It could have been just as easily implememented by having a big red button with
a cover over it, but they decided to emulate the European 112 number.

When you do call 112, you reach a call center, which determines what you need
and calls the regular numbers for you. You can also dial them directly, but
you don't get the high priority of a 112 call. 

GSM phones will let you make a call with no SIM or an unauthorized SIM, and
mine will do it with the keyboard locked. I've never tried it, but it you 
accidently hit 1 when the keyboard is locked, it offers you 112 calls. 

For the milennium they had an English 911 service intended for tourists, but
shortly after (spring 2001), it was dropped. By that time there was country
wide GSM, D-AMPS and N-AMPS service with worldwide roaming contracts, so they
just had to bring an 800, 900, or 1800 cell phone.

BTW some idiot sent around a "cell phone tricks" page email "you can make an
emergency call on a cell phone by dialing 112, try it". :-(

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM