SMS in not a reliable mechanism for emergency 999 services.

Emergency SMS to SMS services require new operator protocols to be developed and deployed among the various services. Ambulance, Fire Brigades, Police and Coast Guard.

VoiceTexts utilises the established voice based protocols automatically.

 
Why do we need 2 methods for Emergency 999?

Each of the options Deaf Call and Deaf 999 have their own advantages and disadvantages.

The Deaf 999 service is convenient. It can be used for non emergency or non time critical access to 999. It is an SMS converted to audio and dialled out to 999. But SMS is not real-time and there could be a delay before the operator hears the Deaf 999 call. Also in a standard 999 calls there are background or atmospheric sounds, noises and voices which are important indicators for the emergency services.

The Deaf Call service is as close to a standard call as possible. So any background sounds, or voice input will be heard by the 999 operator. It's also real time, so the call will connect to the emergency center immediately. The caller can say several different things and make changes to the VoiceTexts while on a call.

There have beeen many attempts to provide a pure SMS only emergency service.

Historically a pure SMS to SMS emergency service has proven to be much more difficult than initially anticipated.
As emergency services, well versed in voice based telephone procedures, have needed to radically tailor these procedures for SMS only communications. Also, reliable SMS communication without network delays have been difficult to develop. In critical situations these delays could be life threatening.

" In the majority of cases there are no problems, but even on some of the best networks 0.66% fail" That's almost 1 in every 150 text messages fail.Timo Leppinen, Head of Telecommunications Standardisation and Technical Steering, FICORA, 31 May 2006

There have been several attempts to provide pure SMS emergency services around the world. All have purported to be successful, but non have been extended further than their local catchment areas. In fact the success of SMS emergency service is patchy. It requires significant investment in infrastructure and personnel training. As well as new protocols between the various emergency services.
The main reason for the delay in implementation has been in specifying the procedures for the emergency response centres.

There are numerous other challenges including.

  1. Security
  2. Hoaxing. (Spoof numbers).
  3. No background sounds.
  4. Latency. It may take several minutes from sending to receiving.
  5. Text speak. Mix of english and text talk syntax.
  6. Locations based services for SMS not available.
  7. SMS can fail completely. The text may never be received.

"Managing user expectations could prove extremely difficult. Since the majority have no understandings of the possibilities or limitations of SMS technology".Guido Gybles director of technologies RNID United Kingdom

Why are there no SMS help lines?

The initial commercial attempts to set up SMS based help lines and call centers, faced several technical and social challenges.

The early technical challenges were overcome. Although today, it's not a problem to receive SMS and send automatic responses. But as soon as personalised information, requiring a human operator is requested, these technical challenges become more acute.

That's when the non real time aspect of SMS, beloved by millions worldwide, becomes the bane of SMS service operators, trying to handle multiple clients simultaneously.
You really can't expect an operator to deal with just one slow SMS client at a time. Now can you?
Wait a minute...., that's what voice operators do. All the time.

Beep Beep Busy

Unlike phone lines, SMS doesn't have a busy signal and you can't send it to voicemail. The only alternative is to reply to the sender with an SMS telling them all the operators are busy. This options does work, but only to a limited extent.
Sending busy SMS is not free.

One busy text is fine, even two is acceptable, but after that, the sender looses interest and will probably never try again.
Also, when an operator does becomes available, the sender may not be ready, changed their minds, or may just ignore the operator.

Several solutions have been tried, but none have solved the inherent technical difficulties. Then the social aspects compound the problems.

Patience please
The other problem is delays in the network. Although the vast majority of SMS are sent and received in seconds, sometimes it can take several minutes.

And although people don't expect an instant reply, consumer experience indicates mild irritation sets in, if they don't get a reply in under 3 minutes. They will assume something went wrong and the message was not received.

The Social Aspect of SMS help lines

"Too many people have mobile phones" and want to use SMS all at the same time."

SMS help lines are often inundated with SMS received with non standard spelling.

Unfortunately multitasking SMS operators don't improve with increased loading and multiple repeat requests. :-)

Users have been known to just stop in the middle of a session, leaving operators "hanging" for indeterminate periods.

Users run out of call credit, batteries go dead, they can be out of coverage, leave their phones at home, or switch off their phones.

By the way, who is sending these SMS?

When you see the senders number . You can be certain who it came from. WRONG!
It is very easy to replace (spoof) the sender number in SMS communications with any other number.
This is one of the reasons users of emergency SMS services can't access these services until their personal details are registered with the service.