Why dial 9 for outside line and not something else?

[JordanWitthoft]

Too many people have been dialing 911 lately. Does anyone use something else to dial out like 8 or 7? I tried to find what the reasoning for 9 being picked and didnt find anything?

Thanks,

 

[amriddle01]

We don't use any prefix, but the UK/Eur are lucky in that respect. You can use any prefix you like it's just people are so used to 9 it's a hard habit to break and that's why it's still so common

 

[Telecomboy]

Maybe because back in the day centrex lines used "9" as the dial-out. You can do 2 things though. ARS has an entry of 11 and 911. Which means you can dial 911 (to access the 11 entry) as well as 9911 (to access the 911 entry). If you delete the entry for 11 and make sure everyone knows to dial 9911 the issue will stop. Otherwise, I have also used dial 8 for clients before.

 

[crumthwacket]

Be very very careful - if someone is trying to summon emergency services and they can't get to them because of changes to the 911 dialing plan you could (and probably would) be found guilty of criminal negligence.

 

[amriddle01]

Luckily the people who came up with the UK emergency number made it deliberately difficult to misdial (from the days of pulse dialling and cable faults causing shorts etc) but very easy to dial in an emergency... 999

 

[NLPeterK]

Funny, on the mainland they made it 112 deliberately because it's doesn't take long when pulse dialing ;-) 999 takes forever.

Before 112 we had 0611. The slogan was "0611. Als elke seconde telt" "0611. When every second matters".

;-)

 

[CarGoSki]

When every second matters. Funny. So the old way was three digits - 112 - and the new way was to add one additional digit and a slogan to tell everyone that when seconds matter one additional dialed digit is somehow faster. cause you know.. seconds matter.

 

[tlpeter]

The old way was 0611 and then was changed in to 112
Pay attention CarGoSky

BAZINGA!

I'm not insane, my mother had me tested!

 

[CarGoSki]

hehe..