UK Priority on emergency networks
No. I work for three major contractors providing frontline 999 to the public on behalf of more than one significant service. The sort of people you want turning up in a hurry when you need us.
In one service area we have MDTs fitted to our trucks, but these fault at least once every few shifts, and whilst there is a "company phone" in the vehicle as backup this does not have any ACCOLC or other special simcards (whatever the new equivalent is) as we are "only a private company". Usually when we book on with control we are asked for a backup number as well which will be the crew's own mobile. Again there's no way for us to get any priority simcards that we are aware of.
In the second services area we only get issued one airwave handset with all instructions coming by text, everything else is done on crew's own mobiles and crew's own GPS units suckered onto the windscreen, so the comms is even less resilient, and the third service is a major voluntary provider so with less budget there are not enough airwaves if quite a few of use are working (and these all have to be booked in and out of a central depot over an hour away, for "security reasons" before and after each shift) and we rely on point to point VHF (probably more resilient) and again crew's own mobiles.
Whilst there would undoubtedly be some abuse of allowing all front line contractors to get priority simcards, the current view from HMG services is that such things are for senior managers only and we peons should just learn to use the equipment properly as it was very expensive and cannot possibly go wrong.
As the services move towards 5G, then someone needs to sort out a system whereby those of us doing this kind of work can get access to the infrastructure we need to provide that service, currently it is simply not there.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
