If you are in the UK, you must have an active SIM in your phone!

Your SIM does not need to be in credit, but it does need to be active. That is, it will connect to your network provider.

If you do not have any coverage from your provider, other networks will automatically let you on to make an emergency call only if you have a SIM card.

Why?

This is a decision by Ofcom - the organisation which regulates telecoms in the UK. It was taken to reduce hoax calls.

evidence from Europe suggests that the incidence of hoax calls is higher where a mobile phone does not have a SIM card.

This suggests that one approach is to only extend 999 mobile roaming to mobile phones with an active SIM card.

Access and Inclusion Digital communications for all - 2009 - §8.46

You can read further details about the evidence and how the UK and other EU countries deal with this.

Testing this

If you don't believe me or the resources I've listed, you can pull the SIM from your phone and then try to connect to the emergency services. It should be impossible in the UK.

Remember - making hoax calls to the emergency services is illegal.

Alternatives

If you have a valid SIM card in your mobile, you can also send text messages to the 999 service - although you will need to register for this service.

112 is the European wide emergency services number. Wherever you are in the EU, dialling 112 will get you through to the local emergency services. In fact, most GSM networks outside of the EU will also route your call correctly.

This is an important day. Dialling 112 could save your life. Sadly, the UK isn't doing anything to promote it.

So, what better way to celebrate than by designing a JIL widget to allow you to quickly dial 112 in an emergency? (That's a rhetorical question...)

JIL Widget

I've written before about the JIL SDK and my professional involvement with it.

The JIL SDK allows us access to the telephony subsystem.  This allows us to directly place a call - usually via the native dialer application.  It's a very simple call, all you do is pass it a string.  It will take 0-9+#*.  So, you can use it to call USSD commands.  Annoyingly, you can't get information back from the commands - a problem also present in Android.

So, the code is simply

<script type="text/javascript">
    Widget.Telephony.initiateVoiceCall("112");
</script>

That's it.

Logo

The EU has a logo that they want people to use for 112 promotion.

Their licensing terms are very enlightened (for a government organisation)

Any organisation, institution, company or individual willing to inform citizens of the European emergency number can use the materials informing about the 112 and general logo of the 112 which are available on our website. Regardless of the size or the branch of economic/social/cultural activity, all the entities concerned with safety and emergency issues are welcomed to use these materials and ideas for their campaigns.

Download

Download and install the widget.

On the Vodafone H1, you may need to dial *#35767# to remove the H1’s security check.

If you’re interest in developing for this platform, there’s a €1,000,000 bounty up for grabs.  There’s also a Dev Camp at Mobile World Congress this year.

I work for Vodafone – this is my personal blog, I don’t to speak for them.  All opinions, claims and mistakes are my own.