A Place On The . Net

This story is interesting:br /
a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7748046.stm"br /
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7748046.stm/abr /
br /
A few thoughts I've had:br /
br /
It may help to know that in the UK, their emergency phone service is
handled by their national telephone company BT (British Telecom).nbsp;
Calls to 999, 112 (and possibly 911 as well) are all sent to BT
operators at regionally central locations.nbsp; After reading this story I
am even more convinced that our method of local PSAP's is worth the
additional cost.nbsp; a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999_%28emergency_telephone_number%29"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999_(emergency_telephone_number)/abr /
br /
But what of the silent calls?nbsp; Their methods for handling them don't
seem to work all that well.nbsp; On the other hand, do we have any such
procedures?nbsp; I'll direct that question to my co-workers in operations.nbsp; Asking the caller to tap the handset or "press 55" sounds
like a good start, but obviously that will only catch a few.nbsp; Is there
a better way?br /
br /
The national emergency text number is an excellent idea too.nbsp; I would
like to know if APCO or NENA is pushing anything like that.br /
br /
112 is the standard across Europe, 911 for N. America.nbsp; But in this day
of modern telephone switching, why can't calls to all the most common
numbers be routed to the PSAP?nbsp; 112, 911, 118, 119, 000, 110, 08 and
999 should all be routed to the local PSAP regardless of where you are
in the world.nbsp; This can't be too tough as both 112 and 999 work the
same in the UK.nbsp; br /