In many countries the public telephone network has a single emergency telephone number (sometimes known as the universal emergency telephone number or occasionally the emergency services number) that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assistance. The emergency number differs from country to country; it is typically a three-digit number so that it can be easily remembered and dialed quickly. Some countries have a different emergency number for each of the different emergency services; these often differ only by the last digit. In the European Union, Russia, Ukraine and Switzerland and others "112" was introduced as a common emergency call number during the 1990s, and as the GSM standard it is now a well known emergency number across the globe alongside the North American "911".
Read more about Emergency Telephone Number: Configuration and Operation, Emergency Numbers and Mobile Telephones, Emergency Numbers
Famous quotes containing the words emergency, telephone and/or number:
“In this country, you never pull the emergency brake, even when there is an emergency. It is imperative that the trains run on schedule.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“It’s a hard feeling when everyone’s in a hurry to talk to somebody else, but not to talk to you. Sometimes you get a feeling of need to talk to somebody. Somebody who wants to listen to you other than “Why didn’t you get me the right number?””
—Heather Lamb, U.S. telephone operator. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“It is not the number of years we have behind us, but the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible and determined to find out the truth about everything.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)