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112 SIM-less calls suspended

By Stephen Whitford, ITWeb contributor
Johannesburg, 24 May 2004

The ability to dial the internationally recognised 112 emergency number from cellphones without SIM cards has been temporarily suspended pending a ruling by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA).

Cleo Socikwa, head of corporate communications at Cell C, says the service is still available from all the networks to cellphones that contain a SIM, even if the PIN has not been entered.

Socikwa says the 112 service has been abused by hoax callers and those making non-emergency calls. A pilot project was run from August last year to January to determine what impact not providing the 112 service on SIM-less phones would have.

"International SOS has done a detailed analysis on the 112 emergency calls received on the Cell C network for the last 13 months. In March 2003, approximately 31.02% of all 112 calls received were prank calls. Only 39.47% were relevant. Since the block on SIM-less calls by Cell C in August 2003 there has been a steady decline in the prank calls. In January 2004 only approximately 24.78% were prank calls and 52.82% were relevant or emergency calls. The calls to 112 for product-related queries have also dropped from an all time high of 30.69% of all calls answered to 22.4% in January 2004.

"Cell C has therefore recommended to ICASA that it continues blocking SIM-less calls," Socikwa says.

Mandisa Korri, spokesperson for MTN, says SIM-less 112 emergency calls are blocked as a result of the high volume of prank calls received by the 112 emergency call centres and in particular from cellphone shops testing phones.

"We believe blocking SIM-less 112 calls has enabled emergency service providers to deliver a better service, without being bogged down by calls that are not valid emergencies," Korri says.

A final determination by ICASA is still awaited by the networks. ICASA could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.

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