It's not simply our local councils that make a mess of things; with the almost unlimited income central Government 'enjoys' you would hope that they could at least keep the 999 service running.
It all began on 10th November 1935, when five women burned to death in a house fire in central London. A neighbor had tried to call the fire brigade on his home telephone, but had to wait in a queue for his local exchange. By the time he got through to the operator, it was too late.
Incensed, he wrote a letter to The Times, which provoked an immediate government inquiry.
Ah, those were the days. Two years later, the first emergency call system in the world was rolled out: dial 999, a red light would flash at the exchange, and your call would be immediately answered. The rest is history ? with many variations like 000 in Australia and 111 in New Zealand, the idea spread around the world and every telephone became a hotline to help.
Except, of course, when it isn't. The UK's 999 system is a regulatory requirement for major telco BT, who recently mucked it up and is in trouble. At least it's a uniform countrywide service, unlike the US 911 system, which is barely a system at all but a patchwork of uncoordinated local provisions. The big problem, however, is technology.
The 999 system set the blueprint, and was brilliantly designed to work with telephones of the day. All phones were powered along copper cables from the exchange, which had battery backup so everything worked through power outages. The system was inherently local and universal: you could pick up a phone anywhere and be in contact with your area police, medics or firefighters in seconds, even if you knew nothing about your location.
Almost none of this is true today. What remains of plain copper cable telephone systems is being phased out in favour of VoIP or mobile, each dependent on an infrastructure that goes out when the light does. You no longer call from a fixed geographic point with a known number, but are at the mercy of a skew of GIS systems that may or may not work for you. If you come across five women burning to death these days, and if you have mobile coverage for your operator, you'll get through but you might not be able to tell them where you are.
This is symptomatic of an even bigger picture, where we know the value of instant reliable emergency communication but the evolution of technology with no coordination has produced a huge tangle of random systems. You may have an emergency network on broadcast radio and TV, but everyone's on Netflix. Or you may use the cell broadcast system: good luck with that. There are innumerable separate systems for aircraft and shipping, many of which are prone to false alarms and none of which provide redundancy for the others.
It's an expensive, unholy shambles and when things really go wrong and a natural disaster knocks out all the local infrastructure you have to wait for the local radio hams to dig themselves out from their cellars and wire things up again. We can do better.
Ah - the huge benefits of privatisation...
