Following on from their meeting on September 4th 2017, it was revealed that the European Parliament’s Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) has passed a new legislation to improve the emergency 112 service in Europe.
Similar in purpose to the E911 service – an ‘enhanced’ emergency services number currently used in North America – the new legislation will extend the capabilities of the current 112 service so that calls made from mobile handsets will be considerably easier for emergency services to trace.
Back in the days before mobile when emergency calls were made exclusively on landline phones, all a person had to do to locate the caller was search for the address where the fixed line was installed. Now, however, it is claimed that as much as 70% of emergency calls in Europe come from mobile phones and locating the caller is a significantly more complex task.
Though a call from a mobile phone can be located using the cellular network, this method only allows the authorities to locate the caller within a perimeter of a few hundred meters and a much faster solution is needed to ensure the emergency is dealt with as soon as possible.
Thankfully, the IMCO Committee voted in favour of a series of new changes to the current 112 services to ensure that any emergency callers who are too incapacitated to speak or are unaware of where they are located when making the call can still be found quickly.
By 2020, the 112 service will implement handset-based location by using the data from an emergency caller’s handset to more accurately pinpoint their location and direct emergency services to them in the fastest time possible.
In order to inform the public of this new ‘Reverse-112’ system, it is believed that telephone networks will be sending out alerts to the population to warn them and direct access will be available from all (including private networks) throughout every country in Europe.
How do you feel about this new legislation? Do you think it will improve the safety of Europeans or does it impose on public privacy? If you have any questions you’d like to ask or opinions you wish to share, please feel free to submit them to our comments section located below.
