The new 112 number will cut across provincial and municipal boundaries and be able to reroute calls to the relevant emergency services
Jubie Matlou
In less than a year a three-digit telephone number 112 is going to be the country’s common number for the public to access emergency services. The new number will integrate all public emergency centres and replace the more than 1 000 telephone numbers used in different municipalities by various emergency services, such as the police, medical rescue, fire fighters and traffic police.
This initiative, spearheaded by the Department of Communications, seeks to bring about speedy and efficient access to and response from emergency services.
For help after a typical car accident, a caller must dial two or more emergency services and that’s not the worst of it. The caller must be able to figure out the correct numbers to dial depending on the municipal, police and health service boundaries within which the accident has taken place. It’s a nightmare for a caller in dire need of help to save a life or two.
The initiative for a new common public emergency telephone number is among wide policy directives issued by Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri a month ago.
The directive calls for the establishment of integrated public emergency call centres to be called public emergency communication centres or 112 emergency centres throughout the country for all kinds of emergencies. The new 112 number will cut across emergency disciplines and provincial and municipal boundaries, and be able to reroute calls to the relevant emergency services.
Project manager Jabu Radebe says available technology provides for the establishment of both a single virtual call centre and a multiplicity of such centres throughout the country. “Logistical and other considerations will determine the most appropriate approach. Such a decision will be made once the consultative process and planning on technical matters has been concluded,” says Radebe.
“The new call centres will be accessible to fixed, mobile and data messages. Internet access to the call centres should also not be ruled out we should be futuristic in the planning and design of these centres.”
Radebe explains that the funding and management of these emergency centres, a responsibility of the government in this case the Department of Communications includes the upgrading of existing equipment and the acquisition of new equipment as well as maintenance.
“Ideally, we would like all the new call centres to replace the old analogue hardware with digital equipment. Digital technology allows for all kinds of interaction, by whatever technological platform, among service providers,” he says.
Municipalities will be relieved of this function, although the modus operandi of individual emergency services will remain intact.
The establishment of integrated public emergency call centres also requires the development of standard operating procedures and a communications protocol for all the emergency services. This will allow uniformity and efficiency in dealing with all emergencies and enable the various services to communicate among each other.
Issues such as the voice recording of calls and the capturing of the data from calls will be standard for all call centres. In addition, call centre infrastructure will also be able to register all calls, noting the location and other relevant particulars.
Also of importance is the management of the data regarding emergency calls made to a call centre. Regulations governing the call centres will also spell out how long the captured data should be retained before it is deleted from the system.
The envisaged emergency call centres cannot operate without due consideration of questions about human capital. Radebe emphasises that the training of personnel to man the centres is all-important.
“Such training will not be confined to the operation of equipment, but will also entail issues of attitude. Personnel working at these centres will have to be sensitive to, and know how to deal with, distressed callers,” says Radebe.
The concept of user-friendly equipment for the call centres also comes as a priority, particularly for people with disabilities. Telecommunication Device for the Deaf a device capable of information interchange between compatible units using dial-up or private line telephone network connections as the transmission medium is reported to be standard to all the new public emergency centres.
Closely related to the emergency call centre initiative are developments regarding the use of the frequency spectrum for public emergency purposes. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa recommends the allocation of a new band for public emergency.
A common waveband for all public emergencies would allow on-site communication among different services. At the moment the two-way radios used by the police, for instance, cannot be used to contact the medical rescue services and vice versa. Radebe illustrates this point by citing an example of emergency personnel using cellphones to communicate with each other at the scene of an emergency.
At a workshop at the Sandton Convention Centre at the beginning of the month users of radio trunking or communications infrastructure from all three tiers of government users endorsed the department’s move to establish a common radio trunking network for public emergency communications. To this end, user requirements will have to be defined in consultation with government users.
“At the moment the various emergency services use different radio communication infrastructure that is not compatible, and makes inter-operationability difficult among them. Emergency service provision requires that at any given time, the different services should be able to communicate among themselves,” Radebe says.
“If you take the case of the inferno that engulfed the Cape Peninsula early last year, such a situation requires a centralised command of operations on the scene. With the current arrangement, it’s impossible.”