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999 service celebrates 70th anniversary
The world’s oldest emergency service, 999, supplied by BT celebrates its 70th anniversary this year and with some 30million calls handled each year John Medland, BT, explains to the BAPCO Journal how the service continues to evolve...
The UK’s 999 service, the first of its kind in the world, was launched on June 30, 1937. Prior to the service emergency calls were made by simply dialling 0 to contact the operator or for people without a dial on their telephone would simply tap the telephone cradle to attract the attention of the operator. During 1882 the Exchange Telegraph Company introduced fire alarm call points in London, where a lever was pulled to alert the local fire service and in the 1930s Police call points were introduced using telephone rather than telegraph technology.
1935 In November a serious fire at the London surgery of aural surgeon Dr Philip Franklin at 27 Wimpole Street W1 caused the death of five women. The inquest heard that the Fire Brigade arrived at the scene before the operator had answered a neighbour’s call to alert them to the fire, and the Belgrave Committee was set up to study the problem of operators’ identifying emergency telephone calls.
The Committee believed that there should be one number throughout the country to alert the emergency services and that the number must be easy to remember. The number had to be three digits long to work in London. It was important that emergency calls could be made from coin box telephones without inserting any money (at the time money had to inserted before making a call). It was relatively simple and inexpensive to modify call boxes to allow the 9 to be dialled without inserting coins, and the choice of 999 was made.
1937 On 30 June 1937 the 999 service was introduced to 91 automatic telephone exchanges in London. A caller dialling 999 would be connected to the operator in the same way as a regular call, but light and sound signals in the telephone exchange would alert the operator that this was a priority call. If no operator was free to make the call, the operator would break off dealing with a regular call.
In the first week there were 1336 emergency 999 calls (1073 genuine calls; 171 who wanted the operator and 91 ‘alleged practical jokers’) and 1896 emergency calls using the old way of dialling 0.
Glasgow became the second city to have the service in 1938 with it being extended to all major towns and cities by 1948.
The service has expanded rapidly since its inception when red lights and klaxons would signify an emergency call was being received. The first week of the service saw more than a thousand calls made. This has increased to around 560,000 calls a week. BT currently handles around 30 million calls a year from fixed and mobile phones, answering more than 95 per cent of calls within five seconds. BT operators receive many late night calls and the early hours of New Years Day is traditionally the busiest day when up to 12,000 calls can be received each hour.
To mark the platinum anniversary, BT is changing the moving colours on the top of the BT Tower to blue and white, to simulate that of a flashing light on an ambulance or fire engine. In a press statement released to celebrate the anniversary BT chairman, Sir Christopher Bland, was quoted as stating, “I am extremely proud of the BT operators in the emergency service sector. They are a highly competent team working at the sharp end of one the most important communications services in the country. They have the satisfaction of knowing that countless lives have been saved over the last 70 years because of their professionalism and commitment.”
A continually evolving service
Discussing how the 999 service has evolved over the last 70 years, John Medland, BT felt that of most notable impact within the last ten years was the introduction of location data. “This had a huge impact on call handling, and even on fixed lines providing caller location has saved on average 30 seconds per call providing valuable time savings to the emergency services.”
It was during 1998 that BT introduced a new free 999 information service for the emergency services with the automatic forwarding of the number and address of the phone from where the 999 call has been made, which resulted in improving call handling and dispatch times.
Medland also pointed out that during 2003 the BT began routing all calls from fixed line by their postcode, which allowed an even closer match with the emergency service catchment areas and allowed movement away from all numbers with the same area code being routed in the same way.
Approximate mobile location details were also introduced based on radio coverage of the aerial picking up the call. This service is in line with the latest EC Directives on making location information available and on privacy and data protection, again helping increase the speed in which the 999 calls are handled. Medland also explained that during 2006, of the 30 million 999 calls handles by BT, some 50% are from mobile handsets with 60% of calls connected to the emergency services (as many of the mobile calls were dialled accidentally). Explaining further, Medland pointed out that BT operators are able to filter out accidentally dialled calls through a series of set protocols. “On average we receive 17,000 accidental calls from mobiles every day,” he said.
Aside from mis-dialled accidental 999 calls, the service continues to receive non-emergency 999 calls and Medland considered only an ongoing public education campaign could change this. The recent trial of 101 across five areas has yet to show an impact, although it is perhaps too early to say at the moment and BT is looking forward to the autumn review by the Home Office to ascertain if the 101 service will assist in the reduction of non-emergency calls being made to the 999 service.
Discussing the use of 112 as an emergency call number, Medland pointed out that since 1993 it had been working in parallel with the 999 service and he believes that in the UK, as across Europe, there is no thoughts to replace the 999 service but for each national code to run transparently alongside the 112 service.
The recent advent of Voice over IP (VoIP) has also created additional evolvement for the 999 BT service. Although currently only 0.05% of calls answered are VoIP calls, Medland is well aware of the potential issues that can arise. Commenting he said, “Currently when a 999 VoIP call is made it is automatically flagged up ensuring our call takers request the location verbally with the caller before routing it. Although the majority of callers are in fixed locations, which isn’t an issue, the nomadic callers could potentially cause problems and we are currently investing in research and development to identify how we can dynamically establish the caller location automatically. To do so, co-operation is needed between providers of VoIP, Access Network (WiFi, Broadband etc) and Internet Service.” Concluding Medland emphasised he was involved in progressing solutions to the VoIP location challenge, which he believes is not too far into the future.
