Telephone service providers must offer a service that enables users to reach the appropriate emergency call centre in the event of danger to life and limb, health or property (emergency call service). They must guarantee routing and location identification for emergency calls.
Technical and Administrative Regulations for routing and location identification
The Technical and Administrative Regulations specify the routing and location identification of emergency calls placed from fixed or mobile lines to the alarm centres responsible for the location and type of emergency.
Location information for emergency calls (AML and eCall)
As of 1 July 2022, emergency calls made from mobile phones must transmit more specific caller location information than before. This applies to emergency calls, whether they were made from mobile phones or placed by vehicles in the event of a car accident. Thanks to the more accurate information, emergency services can organise their operations more quickly and efficiently.
Call number display for emergency calls
The Ordinance on Telecommunications Services stipulates that telecommunications service providers must offer their subscribers the option of preventing their telephone number from being displayed on the called party's device. For security reasons, however, exceptions are made to override this option in certain cases. In particular, providers must guarantee that the caller's telephone number is displayed for those connections requiring location identification.
Reference model
In order to increase the safety and quality of the emergency call system in Switzerland, a reference model was developed on behalf of the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications DETEC and the Conference of Cantonal Justice and Police Directors CCJPD. This shows which standards and services the different actors have to fulfil when transmitting emergency calls. It serves as a basis for defining the requirements for technical system leadership in relation to emergency calls.
Further development of access to emergency calls
As a first step towards further developing and modernising access to emergency call services, OFCOM is adapting the technical and administrative regulations (TARs) on routing and location identification of emergency calls. This revision is of a technical nature and mainly concerns telecommunications service providers. The next stage will be to make it easier for people with disabilities to make emergency calls by mobile phone, in particular by providing access via real-time text (RTT).
The adaptation of the existing technical and administrative regulations mainly concerns unauthenticated emergency calls (UEC).
These are emergency calls that need to be routed through a third-party mobile network. This adaptation is intended to ensure that an emergency call can still be made even if only a competing mobile operator's network is available.
The technical and administrative regulations have also been revised in relation to the routing table, which is essential for transmitting emergency calls to local emergency centres.
The new technical and administrative regulations will enter into force on 1 April 2025. OFCOM has already published these on 18.07.2024 so as to allow providers sufficient time to ensure and, above all, test these special cases of making an emergency call across all technologies, in particular 4G and subsequent technologies. The tests will provide further information on the requirements. It should be noted that the devices must also be capable of making an unauthenticated emergency call.
Until the new technical and administrative regulations come into force, unauthenticated emergency calls via 3G must continue to be guaranteed (as a fallback level). The new version of the regulations (No 18) can be downloaded here: SR 784.101.113/1.3 Routing and location identification of emergency calls.
Use your mobile phone for emergency calls
Customers are advised to always use their mobile phone first in an emergency to contact the emergency services of the police (117), fire brigade (118) or ambulance service (144), as this makes it easier to locate them (see Better location identification for emergency calls).
If the mobile phone does not pick up a signal from its own provider, it will attempt to make the emergency call via another mobile phone network, if one is available.
In this special case, however, the caller ID cannot be displayed to the recipient of the emergency call. If the connection is lost, a callback is not possible.
The adaptation of the TAR provisions is a first step towards modernising emergency call handling. A revision of the Ordinance on Telecommunications Services and subsequently of the Telecommunications Act will follow. OFCOM will provide information on this in due course.
Last modification 07.08.2024
