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Silent {999} calls are now common. Between July 2001, when the Silent Solutions system was introduced, and September 2008, there have been more than 40 million such calls - averaging about 5.5 million a year. The overwhelming majority of these are unintended 999 calls, says a Met spokesman.
Because of loop disconnect dialing, attention was devoted to making the numbers difficult to dial accidentally by making them involve long sequences of pulses, such as with the UK 999 emergency number. However in modern times, where repeated sequences of numbers are easily dialed on mobile phones, this is problematic as mobile phones will dial an emergency number while the keypad is locked or even without a SIM card.
dial 111 instead of 999?
Since these numbers were chosen while phones were rotary, wouldn't it have made more sense (and been about 8 times faster) to dial 111 instead of 999?
QuoteSilent {999} calls are now common. Between July 2001, when the Silent Solutions system was introduced, and September 2008, there have been more than 40 million such calls - averaging about 5.5 million a year. The overwhelming majority of these are unintended 999 calls, says a Met spokesman.
111 was specifically chosen to comply with the positioning of Britain's 999. With pulse dialling, New Zealand telephones pulse in reverse to the UK - dialling 0 sent ten pulses, 1 sent nine, 2 sent eight, 3 sent seven, etc. in New Zealand, while in the UK, dialling 1 sent one pulse, 2 sent two, etc. In the early years of 111, the telephone equipment was based on British Post Office equipment, except for this unusual orientation. Therefore dialling 111 on a New Zealand telephone sent three sets of nine pulses to the exchange, exactly the same as UK's 999