London Banter - View Single Post - Is it correct to use 999 in this case...?

Martin Underwood · January 21st 06, 08:52 PM posted to uk.transport.london

Tom Anderson wrote in
:

I had this vague impression that, not only *that*, but if you make an
emergency call from a network X phone, if there's no network X cell in
range, it'll go through a network Y or Z cell if it can find one.
Hence why phones sometimes go into this 'SOS only' mode when you've
got no reception - indicating that they can place emergency calls but
not normal ones. BICBW.

After the 7 July bombings, this was discussed in uk.telecom.mobile and it
was said that many countries implement this use of a "foreign" network
provider for 999 calls if your own network isn't available. However for some
godforsaken reason the UK doesn't do this - probably because the networks
are not legally required to do it here. I despair: what are watchdogs for?