Hardly Any Solutions to Problems with New Information Numbers

Thursday’s emergency meeting regarding the massive number of misdialed calls to the fire department due to the change in the directory assistance number yielded one main conclusion: There are no simple solutions. Effective immediately, a technical call filtering system will be implemented: in the future, callers who dial additional digits after 118 will no longer be automatically routed to the fire department. It was also decided to conduct an analysis of the numbers dialed in error—further solutions will be developed based on these findings. In addition, the automated message for calls to the now-invalid 111 number will be improved. Furthermore, the owners of the new directory assistance numbers starting with 18 must design their advertising messages in such a way that there is no risk of confusion.
However, as the SDA reports, a long-term solution is likely to come only with the introduction of the single European emergency number 112 in Switzerland as well. According to Sauser, there is no timeline for consolidating the numbers for the police (117), fire department (118), and ambulance service (144). This discussion has yet to take place with the emergency services and the cantons.