On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 02:01:33PM +0100, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
This whole "single number" hype should end anyway.
In Russia it is simple, there are three numbers:
01 - Fire Service 02 - Police 03 - Ambulance/Medical response
Easy to remember especially because the number is written in large figures on the side of every emergency response vehicle. You could even retrofit these numbers into other countries because they are two digit numbers.
Personally, I assert that that's bad design for two reasons: 1) they're too *short*: they pre-empt too much dialling pattern space, and they're hard to recognize as what they are, compared for example to 9-1-1 and 1-1-2. 2) it shouldn't, in general, be the place of *someone reporting an emergency* to have to decide what kind of response they want. In the US, for example, medical emergencies are often first-responded by firefighter-paramedics, because there's a firestation closer than the nearest ambulance. There's no way a caller could know what's closer... Cheers, -- jr 'ah... *telecom* :-)' a -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Designer Baylink RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 "...the rough cannot be mean and the love cannot be true, and that's as wise as I can get at 10 o'clock in the morning." -- Bill Shatner, on being an anti-hero.