Hello? Emergency services? I'd like to report a wrong number Greetings, gentle readerfolk, and welcome to Who Me? the section of The Reg in which we soften the crushing blow of the working week’s return with tales of technical transgression. We shall Regomize this week's hero – if that's the word – as "William" and let you know he once had a job configuring a corporate telephone system …
My old work use the European emergency number (112) for their emergency number on the landlines. Although at first it seems like a dumb idea at first it makes sense as they have their own Fire Brigade (including ambulance) onsite who are a lot nearer than the public ones. Moreover, the fire(wo)men are specially trained and equipped for chemical incidents.
Interesting.
A certain acquaintance of mine is involved with a public security organisation on a specific site of national interest.
Said acquaintance related an observation that, if a public emergency vehicle - fire, ambulance - was approaching the gates at a rate of knots, on blues and twos, the standing instructions were to wave them through.
It rather made a mockery of the sites security management.
Usually they get a briefing that one is expected.
That still leaves the door, sorry, gate, open for abuse but that's risk acceptance for you - delaying an emergency vehicle also comes with its own risks, and you can always escort the vehicle to where it's needed (also speeds things up as they may not be familiar with the site).
"(also speeds things up as they may not be familiar with the site)."
Local emergency services are usually well aware of any "special" sites in their area. They will often visit by appointment during quiet or down time to make sure their staff are familiar with these special sites, how to access them and where to go etc. Place like that are almost always well prepared for any emergencies with plans in place and regular training visits.
Well at the site I work at, the public emergency services can come and do familiarisation visits all they like - they'll still probably not know where they are going. It's a massive site, with literally hundreds of buildings, and multiple entrances - get the wrong entrance and you won't be able to get to the right building. It does have it's own fire service, and police (of the sort that carry semi-automatic weapons) provided by their customer. I don't think they have their own ambulances though.
I do know they have regular exercises with the public emergency services - we get notified when they are on so we can keep out of the way.
And they do have the stereotypical security people - no pass, no entry, not knowing you had to apply two weeks in advance giving your inside leg measurements is no excuse and no you military ID isn't getting you in here. I've had meetings in reception more than once - it wasn't me without a pass !
Where I worked some while ago, they had a medical centre on site, so if anyone was injured at work, they could be treated quickly. They had an old LDV Sherpa ambulance parked near the building, so injured workers could be collected from almost anywhere on the site. One major problem - the bloody thing would never start, so it was a frequent sight to see four burly Security men pushing it down the main drive to bump start it.
I was once treated to a ride in it after I had been knocked off my bike (Doored, ithink it's called) and was sitting at my desk when my Boss said "You look terrible, what is wrong?" He called the ambulance and I was examined by the Company Doctor, who thought I might have some broken ribs. Cue another trip in the Sherpa to the Accident department of the local hospital, where I was X-rayed to confirm that I had three broken ribs.
There is much more to this story, but I won't bore you with it!
Sounds similar to the science sites in south Oxfordshire - particularly Harwell when they had the plutonium research facility there in building 220 (long since gone). Special training for that fire crew was particularly special - you'd never summon external emergency services, you'd speak to the on site ones and they would work out whether extra help was required.
So emergency calls would be 9999 not 999
This isn't true. Because of the next part...
and no internal extensions could begin with a 9.
The reason no internal extensions can begin with 9 is precisely for this reason! You wouldn't want people being confused in an emergency about needing to prefix it with some extension.
It is true that for dialling external numbers you usually need a prefix but this doesn't apply to emergency calls.
And just continuing to bash 9 won't prevent you from getting through either.
Every system I've set up (and I've done quite a lot) has had a config item for emergency numbers such that they will automatically go to an outside line (and a specific one where applicable - eg landline vs voip) but also will cut off an existing call if all trunks are in use to ensure the emergency call goes through.
Working for a very large company a few years ago and was briefed during the induction on what to do in an emergency. There was a health and safety department and a fire department alongside security. All of these had internal extensions for each site that were easy to remember such as 5555, 6666. These can be dialled externally as well an internally if you knew the full number. So 01632 960 5555 would hypothetically call health and safety on a non company landline or on a mobile phone. The management and more senior non management staff had mobiles and the full emergency numbers were programmed into them. However certain internal extensions were internal incoming calls only. You couldn’t dial them directly at all from an outside line and calls to external numbers from those extensions didn’t have a caller ID number.
So one afternoon a manager wanted to call one of those internal only extensions from his work mobile whilst at a clients. He is unaware that he can’t dial it from his mobile and tries what he assumes is the full phone number. He worked out the number by using one of the two 7 digit prefixes that the company used at that site, so dialled 01632 960 0945 Sadly that number belonged to a little old lady who was nothing to do with the firm. He tried repeatedly and was getting just as annoyed as she was that he couldn’t get through. She was sent a large bunch of flowers as an apology but he wanted this fixed. So the next morning he called the Telecoms department first thing and told them he wanted the extension to take direct incoming calls immediately if not sooner.
A bloke turned up half an hour later and asked which phone it was and for a budget code please.
Why do you need a budget code he asks?
Well you want a new outside line,
Okay.
Those things cost money
Okay,
Telecoms don’t pay for them,
Okay,
So no budget code, no line.
Oh…..well……maybe it can wait then, not really that urgent I suppose.
PBX and the public telephone used to use exactly the same electromechanical systems.
The PBX would have an "external mode" relay triggered by 9. That would literally "pick up" the external phone line and connect your circuit to the public telephone.
You would pick up the phone, hear the internal dial tone, then dial 9, wait for the external dial tone* (which sounded a little different), and finally dial 999 or 911.
If you didn't dial 9 first, then it was physically impossible for any of your digits to reach the outside world.
* I suspect you probably didn't actually need to wait as the relays were very fast compared to the reset time of a rotary phone (that the later button phones emulated), but we were always told to do so.
It used to be the same where I work, you had to dial a 0 for an outside line. That's all gone now. As it's a factory and everybody is everywhere, the company sorted out a job lot of mobile phones so everybody important has a phone with them, and some of the lesser important people have those two way radio things with some sort of code to block out external transmissions and render theirs gibberish (though, to be honest, somebody yelling that they need their hundred kilograms of yogurt right bloody now isn't exactly a security issue).
Another thing in the electromechanical era was that (at least in some parts of the UK), the *real* emergency number was 99. The idea was that if there was a glitch, or the user was in a panic, the call would go through; the third 9 was redundant.
Brilliant idea? Maybe not so much. While I was a teenager, one of my mates had a home phone number that *ended* in 99. I rang him up one day and there must have been an electrical glitch at the crucial moment, because the reply I got very quickly indeed was "Emergency, which service do you require?" My answer, naturally enough, was "Jesus Christ!"
[The number was on a nearby local exchange so there were two electromechanical exchanges involved, Leicester and Oadby to be precise. Most likely the glitch was that the call between the two exchanges dropped just before I dialled the last two digits.]
... or would depend on the country, the configuration of the PBX system, and - as someone noted - the century.
In my place, whatever you dial, if you're not dialling the trunk prefix (typically 0), you'll reach either an internal number, or nobody at all. And everybody in the (/ any) company is familiar with that.
Local village phone numbers were four digits and you had to dial 99x to select one of the other villages. Each 9 took you closer to emergency services so from some locations you had to dial 9x for another village or you would get to the emergency operator. Dialing from a phone box you did not know could easily lead to a wrong number.
I had a weird modem failure, every five seconds it would bleep a 9 tone. When I saw the modem reporting the line was active, I picked up thinking somebody had called at that exact moment.
Embarrassed! But the person on the other end was kind too. I promised to unplug the modem and not put it back on until the fault was fixed.
I rigged up a fake phone line (current loop) and set it to think it had picked up the line. I heard the bloody thing start bleeping 9 again, so I binned it. No idea what went wrong, but I think the emergency services can cope with one weird cockup. Two would be pushing my luck. No idea what went wrong, it hadn't been told to dial anything...
There was a local antiques dealer near where I used to work, where I'd sometimes drop in on the way home to have a browse.
I saw a fairly nice desk there and rummaged further. In one of the drawers was an old sales invoice from a local corn merchant, which bore the companies phone number: "Eaton Bray 6"
Decades ago, in at least some parts of North America, the telcos assigned coin-operated public telephones numbers in the 9xxx block. They did not allow collect calls to be made to a coin phone. The 9xxx phone number was a red flag to the operator. When I made a collect call from the college dorm's hall phone to my parents, there would be an additional delay as the originating Bell of Pennsylvania operator would have to verify with Chesapeake and Potomac that my parents' landline, 647-9046, was NOT a coin box before completing the collect call. I found that if I included the phrase "and no, it's not a coin box, it's my parents' home phone" in my initial request to set up the call, they would take my word for it and skip the time-consuming verification step.
Easton, Pennsylvania still had an electromechanical telephone exchange in those days; I believe that it was the step-by-step variety using Strowger switches. There was a wonderful (to my ears) cacaphony of clicks, clacks, and buzzes audible outside the telephone exchange building. I regret not having thought to ask if our electrical engineering department could arrange a tour of it.
Chap who used to work for me was at one time a wireman in a company that built telephone exchange equipment. One day, whilst wire checking a huge bank of Strowger gear, he fell asleep on the top of his stepladder, and only woke up when the Security man shone his torch on him during his nightly patrol around the building. As it was now after midnight, he was escorted off the site and told to come back later to explain his presence up a ladder in the dark.
For this reason I've heard that internal phone systems are often programmed to route 99 to emergency services.
On a sinister note I seen to recall one mobile phone (may have been an early iPhone) tired the emergency dial codes for a large range of countries to the local emergency number automatically ... seemed a good idea until it was found one of the UK mobile companies had the same number for it's voice mail as some obscure Asian country
"tired the emergency dial codes for a large range of countries to the local emergency number automatically"
That is all mobiles.
On mobiles emergency calls are not handled like normal calls, when you dial 911 or 112 or whatever it doesn't actually dial that number with the tower, when the modem detects a GSM emergency number it transmits an emergency signal to the nearest tower.
As per GSM spec (https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/wp-content/uploads//NG.119-v1.0-3.pdf):
"When an end user dials a number related to an emergency, or a, the UE shall check if this number is identified as a valid emergency number.
The following nominal cases are identified by the UE as valid emergency scenarios:
• Red button usage
• Emergency Numbers as defined in section 10 of [7]:
• Standard emergency numbers dialled by the user (112 and 911)
• Any emergency call number stored on a SIM/USIM (only possible if SIM/USIM present)
• 000, 08, 110, 999, 118 and 119 when a SIM/USIM is not present (these numbers are stored in the UE).
• Additional emergency numbers that may have been downloaded by the serving network when the SIM/USIM is present.
If the UE has identified an emergency number (as defined above), the UE initiates a emergency call setup procedure, enabling high priority in case of network congestion."
This very thing contributed to my brother in law's death.
He went over with heart failure while a lorry driver was with him. The driver didn't know that although his mobile provider didn't have coverage there, another one did and would've connected him to the ambulance. Instead he went to a neighbour about half a mile away to raise the alarm, but by then time had run on.
We'll never know if a quicker response would've saved his life. Not the lorry driver's fault of course, but the bit on the mobile's screen where it says 'emergency calls only' could be a lot more prominent.
Not any more, most modern systems do not need a prefix to be dialled for external calls.
Best practice for phone systems is use 4 digit extensions.
If the customer insists on 3 digits, ensure numbers are all between 200 and 899 to avoid any conflicts with emergency services/special numbers such as 101, 105, 109, 111 etc.
One HE institution I worked at asked/preferred you to call their emergency instead; presumably because (a) they might respond faster, and (b) there is no guarantee that the emergency services would be able to find you easily in the largish collection of buildings without assistance.
This isn't the case anymore, internal phone systems automatically rount calls starting 0 or 9 to the outside world, so no need to dial 9 first.
This does mean no internal numbers can start with a 0 or 9, but that's no real hardship.
If we dial 99, the system doesn't even wait for the final 9, it just puts us through to the emergency operator.
Well if you use something like Asterisk (VoIP), it's entirely up to you how to set it up. There are no presumptions.
When I set up phone systems however I usually combine my own tests with that of the network provider.
So, one would be that I will do test calls to (9)999 and (9)112 (both with and without the prefix). Plus I'll direct (9)911 to the real local emergency number.
The providers I use insist that you have run these tests before signing off on completion of the system.
I used to do call logging and one of the reasons we sold loads of call loggers to government departments is because the fire Brigade used to turn up with a few appliances when the big departments called 999.
Obviously you had to be pretty stupid to dial 9999 but the switches were a little slow and the users were used to dialling 9 to get an outside line, impatient they hit it again & again until 5 London fire brigade appliances were hammering down the embankment!
Fire icon of course.
So this was an internal phone system? How did they dial external numbers - there is usually a prefix so maybe 0, meaning someone on the internal system wanting to dial 911 would dial 0-911 not just 911. Otherwise there would be no way to dial ANY external number!
So this is likely a fake story, and not even that interesting - just like most of the recent ones even if they were real. Used to enjoy this column, sadly no longer, let it die please
I fully expect the will be some trolls and keyboard warriors who will post some really clever abuse, feel free, I am sure it makes you feel like a real tough…
In the UK, national telephone numbers generally have a builtin prefix, 0, which telephone systems can use to distinguish internal and external calls. This is not the case in many countries.
However, even in the UK, some valid numbers are harder to distinguish from an extension: 101, 111, 112, 123, for example. And 999, of course.
And, although landlines are increasingly historic anomalies, you ought, technically, to be able to dial a number local to your PABX by omitting the dialling code altogether.
Yep, my work takes me to many different types and sizes of organisations, and not all of them have modern VOIP systems in place so there are many and varied ways of using the internal phone system, not least of which is how to dial the emergency services. On older systems, as others have mentioned, using a "9" prefix for an outside line is still common and "0" for the local operator/reception but neither of those are hard and fast rules. I've also seen some some where you need to dial a 3 or 4 digit prefix followed by "999" to get the emergency operator. There doesn't seem to be anything close to a universal standard.
There doesn't seem to be anything close to a universal standard.
A good start has been made in the US for new 'phone systems:
- “Kari's Law” has been enacted, whereby any calling device within a property must be able to directly dial 9-1-1 without a prefix, with a notification being sent to a central location (e.g. security, reception, front desk),
- Ray Baum's Act takes it a stage further and mandates that location information be included (e.g. address, hotel name, floor, room number)
I can believe it. I set up an Asterisk VOIP system many years ago and 999 (UK) was a special number in the route. The idea was that in a real emergency, people forget to dial 9 or 0 for an outside line and revert to their primary instincts.
I thought the story would go the other way - someone wanted to dial the internal extension 911 and got the emergency services instead.
this is likely a fake story
I do enjoy this column but have to say I'm pretty certain some of them are fabricated.
If somebody had gone through a hiring process and was tasked with working on a phone system there's a good chance they'd understand the significance of 911.
Sure mistakes happen but some of these are clearly BS.
Some people blindly follow processes without thinking as they can't do strategic thought. for some jobs like in a regulated industry this is great; but in others it is less good.
I used to work in a research IT office where the science moves fast and the IT struggles to keep up. We took on a guy with lots of experience on the regulated side of the industry and he struggled because he needed the guidance of a well-defined rigid process...
"Some people blindly follow processes without thinking as they can't do strategic thought."
And some blindly follow the process even if they think it's a stupid idea as they've been pulled up by some arsehat middle manager for not following protocol exactly as written. And if it is as written, it's often less trouble to do something badly/wrongly knowing that you are doing exactly what the instructions say and it isn't your place to change/challenge those instructions. Yes, it is stupid. But that's management for you, they'd rather chew people out for usurping their authority thinking for themselves than recognise that a protocol (that they likely had a part in creating) has problems.
"Malicious compliance" - victim blaming at it's finest. Implying that following a flawed procedure with a likely negative outcome is malice on our part, when the oftentimes reality is that a malicious manager shut down all discussion regarding not following the stated processes as given.
But, of course, any screwup is automatically the fault of the employees...
Given the right (wrong) circumstances, I will gleefully and maliciously follow a flawed procedure strictly, making the completely foreseeable negative outcome a certainty. And I will tell higher manglement about the improvement and give credit where it is due.
And yes, I have done exactly that (with my direct superior standing next to me looking for a whole in the ground to disappear into) and that incompetent middle mangler never knew why production was suddenly stopped and even reversed while higher manglement came down on him like the wrath from the Gods.
And some folks follow the process as it is written right upto the point where they fly the aircraft into the ground.
"Pull up! Pull up!"
"Hey... theres nothing on the check list about a pull up alarm... ohhh there seems to be trees on this runway...."
People often dont think things through... allocate extensions 900-999 to floor nine... ok done..
And off they go to the next job.
> use the 3rd octet of the address to identify the branch.. They ended up with over 300 branches
I knew a University who did that. In the early IP days, their third octet was essentially "building". They did a lot of renumbering over the decade before smarter switches became affordable.
"If somebody had gone through a hiring process and was tasked with working on a phone system there's a good chance they'd understand the significance of 911."
Depends when it happened. 911, or indeed any form of nationwide standard emergency number is a relatively recent thing in the USA and it took many years to spread across the whole of the country. While it may have been decides in the late 50's to early 60's that a standard emergency number was a good idea and the roll out sort of started locally, according to Wikipedia "Regarding national U.S. coverage, by 1979, 26% of the U.S. population could dial the number. This increased to 50% by 1987 and 93% by 2000.[9] As of March 2022, 98.9% of the U.S. population has access.[21]" so, no, it's not really a given that someone would be aware the importance of 911 as recently as the 80's or 90's.
And anyone in the telecoms business would know full well that if a system is heading towards a 1,00 users a 3 digit numbering scheme will never work. 4 digits (at least) every time, also stay away from 1XXX or 9XXX, with the first number 2000 and the last 8999. This way "2911" would be no issue.
I have worked in telecoms for a while and this is VERY believable. And do not underestimate the abilities of the 'cisco certified engineer' left to set up a call manager system in interesting ways.
I can't remember the syntax but you can set the digit analysis to use the next digits in the called number, or if it CONTAINS a given digit string.
Here in the UK we use 999 and 112 (112 was a pan European thing, but not sure if all UK networks supported it due to high level of mis-dials it got)
So it was not unknown for the 'engineer', being very diligent in making sure they will never fail an emergency call, to set up the call manager so ANY dialled number CONTAINING either 112 or 999 will be routed as an emergency call.
So from a busy bank, or network of travel agents, that is quickly a lot of calls. Which in turn generates quite a lot of interest.
Then we had to try to explain to these certified engineers they probably had got it wrong, when as an uncertified no-one I was clearly talking nonsense. Until they checked and quietly corrected it (if you were lucky)...
I recall many years ago being caught out by this. Having set up voicemail on a new mobile (Vodafone?) attempting to retrieve a message I inadvertently dialled 112 instead of 121 and was most surprised to be talking to a ( fortuitously sympathetic) operator …
At the time I was unaware that 112 was a valid emergency number within the UK. I’m still unclear as to whether 911 will work, but I don’t intend to test it!
"I’m still unclear as to whether 911 will work, but I don’t intend to test it!"
It does, but only from a mobile phone, probably because of what someone posted upthread about GSM standards, I would assume that they only take the popular emergency numbers and route them to 999 though since I think he mentioned 118 too, and in the UK that's a popular directory enquiries service (118118) and I think we'd have heard if that was routing to 999 from mobiles by now :-)
Maybe they do dial something like 0 or * to get an outside line, but if something's happening and someone needs to call 911, details like that are often neglected in the heat of the moment. Any sensible system would have an override for 911 or whatever the local emergency number is that reroute the call appropriately regardless of the rules for getting an outside line.
Valid question. One possibility if that this was a "key system" not a "switch", to use the terms our phone vendor used. The "key system" style assumed all calls were internal only. If you wanted an external line, you had to press one of the buttons on you phone that corresponded with an external trunk. You world dial normally at that point.
I can believe it. Since 2020, it's actually a legal requirement in the US that dialing 911 on a PBX (called an MLTS in legal-speak) reaches the outside line, even if a prefix would otherwise be necessary. That law was put in place because in an emergency, people panic and forget things, and sometimes forget to dial the prefix to reach an outside line. Who's to say that wasn't the case here?
I lived in a college at an Australian University back in the early 2000's (that would be onsite House of Residences, I think for our American cousins).
Every room had a 4 digit phone number (e.g. 1327), dial that from an inhouse phone, and you would get the relevant person. Dialling a 1 first also got you an external line - but since external numbers are all much longer than 3 digits, it rarely caused problems (unless a person wanted to dial externally, but was too slow getting passed the 3rd digit!).
Anyway, one day when I was in a bit of a hurry and I needed to call the College Admin Office, but couldnt remember the number off hand, so I took a guess and typed in 1000. For the uninitiated, in Australia the emergency number is 000. Yep you guessed it, cue an answer from the Emergency Services, a hurried apology from myself, and a quickly ended call. I then took the time to find out the correct number for the Admin Office - 1001.
I believe they changed the system to require a 9 for external dialling the next year, after a few people complained...
We did that once in France as kids. In the UK there used to be a number which immediately rang the line back (IIRC 171) and as kids we thought this was hilarious. We tried it in a French phone box and it went straight through to the cops (17) which required some explanation...
There's a number that generates a call back on a fixed circuit switched line in France, I forgot the number, but the system is called the "DERAL" for *Dispostif d'Essais Rapide de lA Ligne*.
Now since it's not possible to get an old school PSTN line, and you can only get at best a triple play box attached phone ( without TV and internet active on the box if you just want a phone ), the system is pointless. ( especally if it's a fiber attached box )
Well, I called 112 by accident once.
I was trying to call an internal extension number stating with 112. Usually you would dial 0 beforehand for an outside line or the extension number directly for an internal one. Only I wasn't using my own phone but the one on a trader's desk. As they would primarily call clients, their phones were configured to call outside lines by default.
A pretty pissed emergency operator lambasted my for trying to speak to a "Javier", insistently, as he was known to be a kind of a joker and I didn't believe it wasn't him answering his phone.
Own PEBKAC goal...
I had a similar incident shortly after 112 was implimented in the uk. The speaking clock was on 123. Our phone system required a press of the earth loop recall button to get an outside line. Phone was set to pulse dialling for some reason i forget. This particular phone had a quirk that it sent a 100ms time break recall (flash) as well as the requested earth loop recall. Occasionally it would glitch enough that the exchange line saw a small bit of the break too after it was seized. So when i dialled R 123 to find out the time, the external system saw [off hook] one pulse, one pulse, 2 pulses,3 pulses, and put me through to the emergency operator.
The chap took it in good humour when in response to 'which service please' i responded 'apparently a telephone engineer!'
for those interested, BT renown 1+4 PABX plus BT Vanguard phones. BT acknowledged the issue and supplied us free of charge with an upgraded phone, the relate series, which did not have this bug.
This is a very common issue. In the Netherlands emergency services use 112, so it won't take long for this issue to show up if you start assigning from the default 100.
I usually start counting from 200 simply to prevent this issue, because if you have extension 111 and 113 it's easy to misdial, and after a couple of times you start to piss off emergency services.
A note on external numbers: for emergency numbers your PBX should have special rules to automatically route emergency numbers to the right place, bypassing any other extensions. In case of emergency anyone, even people unfamiliar with your phone system, should be able to dial the emergency number they are familiar with, without external extension.
Another consideration, especially where a lot of foreigners are expected (hotels, for example), you should add some common foreign extensions such as 911 and 999 and route them to the proper one.
These days this should be done at the provider level, though, but having it routed externally without outside line extension is still a good idea.
Many modern PBX systems don't need a prefix anymore either, they detect this automatically based on number length etc.
I believe Panasonic systems have had options to program this as far back as i can remember (the oldest i've worked with is probably a TDA-100 from the early 2000's)
We have the socialized medicine but that’s just the medical, not the emergency transport. If you call an ambulance that’s a $500 bill (but if you have extended health, like with an employment plan, I think it might be covered — maybe).
I forget what the fire truck cost, for a while the emergency alarm was getting false triggers & not only was it a nuisance to the whole facility (because everybody had to evacuate & then appear at muster to attend the roll call) but the cost was not insubstantial.
I heard that you could turn on any deactivated cell phone in Canada, with no sim whatsoever, and they are all able to connect to 911. It’s like some parents would relent to providing their kids a cellular “for emergency purposes,” and that’s how they did it. You couldn’t use the phone for NOTHING, except the emergency. And then, you can use public wi-fi and free VOIP (Fongo) and free SMS (TextNow), not to mention the likes of Blackberry Messaging and iPhone messaging: all of a sudden paid cellular isn’t particularly relevant anymore.
If I remember correctly, in Aus, if the fire truck turns up for a proper fire, it doesnt cost anything. But if it's a false alarm (i.e. some drunk pushing the fire alarm button, because they thought it would be funny), then it costs a LOT, my memory says A$2000 each time... The Firies, really dont like having their time wasted...
Aussi slang I'd not come across , but kinda predictable. I reckon I could write a script to generate an Aussie to English phrasebook.
Firies but Ambos for paramedics from the ambulance services. The remaining 000 service has quite a number of names some relatively unprintable. ;)
I was doing a lot of travelling to a small city (Nagano) in Japan. This was 25 years ago when you had to take the telephone phone line and plug it into your laptop. We used the AT&T dialer, so you had a freephone local number to phone home and so no charge to me. Every where else it worked fine. In Nagano I got a fax machine. I had to phone back to the UK using the international number rather than use the dialer (and got the hotel markup on the cost of the phone call)
I reported the problem saying phoning from Nagano. The report came back - it works.
I tried it again - it still didn't work.
I reported it again. The report came back - it works.
I raise another report saying You have been testing the Nagano phone number.. 12345789?
The report came back - fixed. The guy on the help desk had been testing the local number for Tokyo, and not Nagano.
My £1000 (about £10,000 today) phone bill was queried - but I gave them the reports I had raised, and my boss said I should do more customer work, than worry about the money.
Decades ago, I worked for a company in the UK (probably now absorbed and/or defunct) that wrote outbound dialler software. The user would provide it with a list of numbers to call and then it would take a number from the queue and attempt to dial it. If the call wasn't picked up, the number would be put on the retry queue for later. Relatively simple stuff.
The problem was this: when the number was taken from the queue, we'd put the configured outside line prefix (usually a '9') on the front before dialling. Then, if the call wasn't picked up, *that* number (including the 9) would be put on the retry queue. When we grabbed a number from the retry queue, we'd put the outside line prefix on it -- again.
As I'm sure you've worked out by now, after a few attempts, every number in the retry queue would start with '999', which would have resulted in us spamming UK emergency services with calls as fast as we could dial them (which, in the end, depended on how many external lines were connected to the switch).
Fortunately, we discovered this bug in pretty short order, while we were still developing against the test switch, and before it had any real outside lines connected to it. It got fixed before the end of the day, and the engineer responsible had a good story to tell in the pub after work (and had to buy the first round, obviously).
They say they allocate ranges to each office and leave gaps between them, but happens if say you allocate 100-199 to sales and 200-299 to accounting and the company grows enough that they need more than 100 numbers for sales? After 199 they'll have to skip to a new range, which defeats the point of having the ranges ("I see the number starts with 2, this person calling me must be in accounting")
Unless this was a really tiny company, where the they had like 10 numbers in each range and the idea of growing so much one office could have 100 people was unthinkable, you'd hope they'd want something more future proof. I've dealt with internal systems that used 4 (usually) and some that used 5 numbers for internal calls. Never seen one that used 3. Maybe that's because I never consulted for small companies, but the hardship of hitting one more button outweighs the hassle of having to change things later if the company grows too much.
The really tiny company you're describing, is an SME. In most economies the percentage of companies that is an SME is going to be in the high 90% range.
You make a good point, but don't forget most PBX installations are going to be for SME's too, and these numbering schemes do make sense for them.
A lot of companies are small enough to have every colleague on a speed-dial button even!
I worked in a large tower block hospital during the late 80's. The health and safety people were very worried about fires in tower block hospitals, they are hard to evacuate quickly. (Like Grenfell Tower but with patients). There was system in place that if you discovered a fire, you pick up any phone and dial extension 888 and it would automatically set off all the alarms, everybody would rush to their evacuation procedures and the fire brigade would send everything they had.
Inevitably, one day somebody dialled it and all hell broke loose.
In the inquiry that followed, the member of staff that dialled it swore blind that he didn't know that was the panic number. He said his pager had gone off and displayed the number 888, so he dialled it. It's possible that somebody may have paged him that by mistake or as a prank. But also, the pagers beep and show 888 for a few seconds during their power on sequence, so it could have been a faulty pager. As far as I know, they never got to the bottom of exactly what happened but after that the system was changed so that the call would go to a 24 hour hotline in the ambulance station instead where a person would take the call and activate the alarm only if necessary.
At the end of the last millenium I worked in a large hospital on the South coast of England. The switchboard not only covered wards and departments but also large accomodation blocks for staff. Often they would be on-call and it was useful to have an internal number.
Like most hospitals the emergency number was 222. This would include cardiac arrests etc.
The number for the largest local taxi company was 222222. This could be accessed by dialing a nine first.
It frequently happened, often to visitors in an advanced state of refreshment, that someone would forget the nine and set of an alarm at switchboard.
Phone numbers are a funny thing.
Once we wanted to have our country code added to all customers phone numbers for SMS messages.
Of course this was outsourced to some foreign company, so when the developer got the translated instructions equivalent to add +44 to all phone numbers, the foreign developer just disabled his brain and did a mathematically +44 to all our phone numbers.Like it would make some sort sense.
After getting lots of complaints the week later, it was rolled back, and the developer was told what it means to add the country code to a phone number.
Translation errors, or lack of cultural understanding can result in lots of issues.
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Somewhat related. Many years ago at the government office I worked at, we had a new phone system installed. As the installers were tracing wires they found every gauge, color and type of telephone wire imaginable. Many of the splices were either just twisted ends and/or with absolutely no insulation. That helped partially explain why the existing phones barely worked. The kicker when the installers went into the mail room to pull wires. When they removed a couple ceiling tiles, they were bombarded with mail. It seems the mail clerk sometimes didn't feel like delivering all the mail so he put it in the ceiling. We had to contact an untold number of people what had happened and then remit and refund any penalties. We also had to cancel a few delinquent tax actions. Not fun.
Can get confusing (to say the least). I've installed PBX's and the one I did we used two digit extensions (we were a small company). I set things up to have 9 get an outside line, and 0 (zero) get the attendant (local operator). When dialing '9', you would get clicks and a second dial tone, and it was pretty obvious. I also had some extensions that were '7xx' (703 was a line to my house!).
Fast forward to my last job. It had a "smart" routing, where it would absorb the '9' and then the number without a second dial tone between. This (obviously) is not a good idea. You try to dial '9' to get an outside line then dial the outside number (which started with '1'). The silly thing would give another dial tone after the first two digits were entered, and people would dial '9' then '1', get another dial tone and dial '1' to start the number they actually wanted to dial. Yup, a call to emergency services (not good). A couple of weeks later it was changed to dialing '8' to get an outside line. Still had dial tone in a weird place, but you got used to it,
One of the first things people should get upon hiring is a simple card with dialing info on it. Probably save LOTS of frustration!
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