Ofcom requires emergency services to accept SMS help requests (UK)

­The UK’s telecoms regulator Ofcom has proposed a voluntary trial, enabling people to send a text message to the UK’s emergency services which should be made mandatory in the country.

The proposal forms a part of a wider consultation on changes to Ofcom’s regulations that need to reflect new European law that comes into effect on 25 May, 2011.

As per the new European regulations, access to the Emergency services for disabled people must be as close to that delivered to other consumers as the technology will allow. While the emergency text scheme does have limitations, such as taking longer to converse by text than by phone, it offers greater equivalence than current alternatives.

The trial has been running in the UK for over a year and is predominantly used by deaf and speech-impaired people who find it difficult to use the phone. The scheme has 14,500 registered users. The trial is reported to have been successful with around one emergency text a day requiring attendance by the emergency services for situations such as strokes, heart attacks and childbirth.

Ofcom is proposing to safeguard the scheme by making it mandatory for mobile operators to provide it to registered users.