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Comment by J_McQuade | Hacker News Reader

I kinda get why they think they don't want to enable this, but when I was a kid I once called 999 (in the UK) as a joke and let me tell you it was only once. My friends and I were there in the room watching films that we shouldn't and the uniformed and kitted-out Constables turned up and gave us an incredibly stern dressing-down about 30 minutes later.

Luckily, I am in the UK where a bunch of 12 year olds who've just watched Scream calling the police about shadows doesn't result in something getting shot, but still - I think I learned something about actions and consequences that day.

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What is bloody annoying is that you can't even test 999. When you set up a PBX it would be nice to know that it would work via the obvious way of actually calling it.

Surely it would be possible to create a test version which gets terminated by a computer instead of hassling an operator - you could send DTMF codes or something similar to indicate a test.

I suspect that there is a little more to your story. Probably that the fuzz had some spare capacity at the time and decided to do an educational exercise on you lot - which worked nicely. Nowadays you hear about all sorts of daft 999 calls - there is a TV programme about it.

Now we are moving into the SOGEA era in the UK. That's where we have "glass" phone lines (FTTP) that don't supply power but have jolly fast internets. 2025 is the year that the copper network gets shut down, except that it wont be! Oh and we will all be using VOIP ie SIP n RTP. The final pretense of circuit switching will trot off into the sunset and be bundled behind a green tent and a single shot will be heard.

I would be surprised if you got in trouble for occasionally calling emergency services to clearly communicate you were testing if it works. During normal operations they should have extra capacity and they presumably also would like you to be confident you can reach emergency services in an emergency.

EDIT: I should specify a great way to be sure this is okay is call the non-emergency number for your local law enforcement and ask them if you can place a test emergency call. In a lot of cases, you will end up speaking to the same people who answer emergency calls, and they can tell you if now would be a good time or not.

It is expressly forbidden to place test calls in the UK to 999. I could pretend to be a confused pensioner calling a taxi but that is not right and I can;t write that up.

The generally accepted method is to subscribe to your TSP's emergency number provision, when doing VOIP. However, it never gets tested and what if a 9 was typed as an 8 in the dialpan?

I used to put in ATAs which are SIP to copper voice bridges (for want of a better phrase) but copper is going away and ATAs are bit thin on the ground these days.

I like change in general but there are some pretty fundamental changes that our gov have not noticed might cause a few issues soon.

Ironically for me: My house is within the nearest town boundary and has copper from the cabinet provision (FTTC). The cabinet is about 500m away. We have had four separate teams rock up to pull fibre to my door and failed. Each one have decried the last team and said it will be fine by close of play.

I am seriously considering putting in wifi PtP to my office from home.

Or you can email them and schedule your test call: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-infra...

You can definitely test 999 for your own VoIP without getting into trouble. I did it a couple of times in the 2010s after moving offices. You just say you're testing, there's no emergency, thank you, and hang up.

I don't know how the UK treats this, but in the US you're supposed to call the non-emergency number and tell them you want to schedule a test call.

Makes sense. This also reduces the chances of a caller being “convinced” mid-call to tell the operator “oh, sorry, this is just a test”.

Way back when, my toddler loved to play with the cordless phone, and just happened to be able to dial 911. a lot. We'd realize a connection was made but not who was on the other end and just hang up. Eventually, 911 called back inquiring why so many hang ups and if someone needed help. I was surprised they took our explanation without dispatching someone to follow up. Maybe that's different now as I know my city has a policy of all calls require a follow up even if it's hours to next day later when they know it's not an emergency

I did this too at the age of 4. Apparently fireman Sam doesn't take phone calls, but the operator was very kind and didn't berate me or my parents for it.

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