Fire escape ladders/ropes/descenders/ ...

[tony sayer]

Surely most all phones now use GPS and not triangulation ?...

<snipped>

[tony sayer]

Isn't it about time Dave you protested outside parlymental re his said matter;)?..

Or had a go at Ofcom, its been years now!..

Course not but in that instance it could be done!..

[Robin]

Emergency services adopt a commercial, closed system and promote it to the point where it is the de facto monopoly. Anyone thinking of competing faces high costs of entry. Clearly nothing could go wrong. After all, no company wouldn't dream of exploiting its position to ramp up the price for the emergency services and other bulk users, would it?

[Peter Parry]

Most certainly do but by no means all, really dumb phones are becoming more popular. Also when relying upon any wireless device it is worth remembering Marconi's first law of communication - "The ability to communicate successfully using any wireless system is inversely proportional to the need to do so"

[Harry Bloomfield]

Ermin explained :

It was a while ago, early days of digital mobile phones. Maybe they were not set up to trace mobile location back then.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Dave Liquorice formulated on Saturday :

How does one register one's address?

[Andy Burns]

Your voip provider should (must?) provide a method, often called your E999 address

[Harry Bloomfield]

I have a normal landline number, rather than voip.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I have a normal landline number that is in fact voip registered to this address

[Andy Burns]

then BT (or whoever) already know the address of the line.

[Peter Parry]

For a normal plain telephone line you don't. It is entirely automatic.

As soon as the call is made the BT emergency operator will be shown the call location. It matters not if you have chosen not to be in the phone book or have your number withheld.

[tony sayer]

In article [e-mail], Peter Parry [e-mail]> scribeth thus

Are they?, seems that everyone i know has to have the latest large screen easily cracked jobbie that keeps mobile screen repairers in a job at almost the same prices as a car windscreen;!.

Actually we used to use many years ago a system that did use triangulation and it was pretty hopeless getting a portable latch onto Three bases when they struggle sometimes to find one?..

Don't recall old Guglielmo spouting that;?..

[tony sayer]

In article <qfqt72$829$ [e-mail], Harry Bloomfield <harry.m1byt@N OSPAM.tiscali.co.uk> scribeth thus

Its on the setup pages of mast all VoIP providers!...

[Harry Bloomfield]

'whoever' depends on which way the wind might be blowing, so far as ISP's - their service and charges. I swap those as necessary. I just thought the 999 service ought to have instant access to correlate number with address. On the very rare occasions when I have rung them, or the less urgent number, they ask me for my address and often as not, my phone number.

[Harry Bloomfield]

tony sayer used his keyboard to write :

That was the day when he first attempted the transatlantic comms and failed :-)

[Harry Bloomfield]

Peter Parry explained :

Thanks!

[NY]

Far enough. But a mobile won't suffer from that.

I would always use my phone's own GPS, together with an app such as GPS Status, to give lat/long or OS grid ref, because I know how imprecise the mobile phone location (triangulation of masts) can be. Our car satnav has a option (rather obscure menu - need to remind myself where it is) which gives lat/long and also a sentence describing the location eg "on A64, 1 mile south west of junction with B1248".

I bet even if you gave them all that info, some of the 999 operators would still want to know what the postcode was :-(

I once had to give a location relative to my postcode (walker collapsed on a footpath behind our house) so I said "Go to postcode X on an OS map; go southeast about 100 metres along the road and there is a footpath that goes north east from the road. Casualty is along there - on a footpath about 300 metres from the road." Ambulance crew were geared up for the casualty being in a house, not on a footpath requiring brisk trot carrying equipment. I think the info that the sharp-end staff get is severely filtered, and subject to Chinese whispers.

As long as you can reach your phone from where you are calling. It would be a lot of work to get phone sockets near to any of the three of the main exits from the house, and then I'd need to get a landline phone for each socket with a long enough cord to reach from there to the safe space away from the house.

[Alan J. Wylie]

I'm getting on a bit now, but I'm still an active caver and used to do a lot of mountaineering. I'm used to tight squeezes and "rope" (or wire) ladders.

One of the mountaineering clubs I'm a member of has a very nice hut. One of the dorms is upstairs with a velux window. It sleeps about 10 people. There used to be a flexible ladder with a "break glass cylinder to release bolt" lock. Twenty years or so ago the hut management committee decided to do a practice run. It took me about 5 minutes to get out of the window and down the ladder, sober, in daylight and dry weather.

The ladded was removed. It was no substitute for smoke detectors and a clear escape route, in this case down a staircase with fire doors isolating it from the other dorms and the rest of the hut, with a clear policy of no storage of combustible materials in the stairwell.

[Alan J. Wylie]

P.S.

In the early 80's, a boarding house at by school had a "Davy Descender" in one of the dorms.

https://cultureseekers.blog/2018/02/01/what-is-a-davy-descender/

[Peter Parry]

When you call the emergency service at least two operators are involved. Firstly the BT operated 999 service operator takes the call and decides which of the 4 services (fire, police, ambulance, coastguard) to allocate it to. They will contact the appropriate closest service to the caller and pass any location information they have. If the local service is busy it will be passed to the next nearest which may not be much use.

The specific emergency service finds out where you are and what the problem is and allocates responders.

If you are calling from a fixed line phone they know where you are. Calling from a mobile the preferred location information is Postcode because almost everyone knows it (Postcode is used in over 99% of emergency calls). Failing that address (as in 67 Firtree Lane, BIggleswade) is preferred.

After that you are in varying degrees of trouble and the chances of getting the right people to the right place in less than a few days starts growing. Emergency services are regional and different regions and different services use different systems.

Police tend to like road name and description, Coastguard like range and bearing from a prominent point. Some can use lat/long - but which one? degrees, minutes, and seconds such as 40° 26' 46? N 79° 58' 56? W,? degrees and decimal minutes, 40° 26.767' N 79° 58.933' W? or decimal degrees such as 40.446° N 79.982° W. ?

OSGB - but SO 08357 43962 or 308357243962? or 083439?

UTM? 30U 0476779 5770702 MGRS 30UVC76777070

Some ambulance services use the OSGB grid reference - but in the all number format 308357243962 which is both uncommon and very prone to transcription errors.

Google maps favours the "plus code" which no one understands "3MP7+FQ Builth Wells"

By the time you have found an operator who can use what you are giving them you will probably have had time to rebuild the house never mind putting the fire out.

Not some, all :-)

Assuming you have working smoke detectors you will have several minutes (at least) warning before a fire gets so fierce it impedes escape. On a phone near the normal exit route put a long extension cable, as you go out take the phone with you and call from the door. You don't need to stay by the phone for long as the operator already knows your address as soon as you call. You don't really need one by each door.