SOS Alarm Sverige AB is a Swedish

publicly owned company A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a business entity created or owned by a national or local government, either through an executive order or legislation. SOEs aim to generate profit for the government, prevent private sector monopolies, provide goo ...

that operates

emergency number An emergency is an urgent, unexpected, and usually dangerous situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment and requires immediate action. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening ...

112 in Sweden. The enterprise is owned equally by the

Government of Sweden The Government of the Kingdom of Sweden () is the Cabinet (government), national cabinet of Sweden, and the country's Executive (government), executive authority. The Government consists of the Prime Minister of Sweden, Prime Minister and their ...

and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions.

History

SOS Alarm has its origin in a state investigation regarding the rural telephone automation from 1944. There it was proposed that telephonists should remain at certain switchboard stations even if they were automated. The telephonists would then be able to connect subscribers to the doctor, police, fire brigade, and similar services. After several lengthy state investigations, it was decided in 1956 that the SOS service should be introduce. At this point of time ''"SOS"'' is an initialism of ''"Samhällets olycksfalls- och säkerhetstjänst"'' or ''"The community's accident and security service"''. Calling number 90 00 00 was chosen, which later was changed to 90 000. The number was chosen because it was easy to remember and unlikely to be dialed by mistake (as the numbers 0 and 9 were on opposite side of the

rotary dial A rotary dial is a component of a telephone or a telephone switchboard that implements a signaling technology in telecommunications known as pulse dialing. It is used when initiating a telephone call to transmit the destination telephone numb ...

). Today the emergency number is 112. The first SOS central opened 1956 in

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. The year after, several others opened in

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, and

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. The capital

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got their SOS central in 1958. At the start the SOS service was a referral service where the telephonist forwarded the person in need to respective emergency service according to various lists with on-call doctors and similar. With time the service expanded to also include fire brigades and ambulances. When the subscriber dialed "''90 000"'' on their phone, the number was converted in the

telephone exchange A telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a central component of a telecommunications system in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It facilitates the establishment of communication circuits ...

s and the telephonist received the call as "''90 7XX"''. The two last digits represented the network junction the call came from, and thereby from which general area the call was made. In 1973 the responsibility for emergency calls was transferred to SOS Alarm, with the state, the ''Local Authorities Association (Kommunförbundet)'', and ''County Council Association (Landstingsförbundet)'' as owners. The company name at this time was SOSAB, but it was later changed to SOS Alamering AB, and then its current name SOS Alarm Sverige AB. The company was financed with appropriations up until December 1994 and became in 1995 a for-profit company. On June 1, 1996, the then-current emergency number 90 000 was replaced with the pan-European emergency number 112

90 000

90 000 was the phone number to the Swedish emergency service that started in 1953, and was operational until July 1, 1996. The number was chosen at a time when phones were large and had

s, and it was specially adapted for Sweden. Unlike most other countries the Swedish rotary dish was labeled 0 to 9, instead of 1 to 0, and the phone number was considered to be easy to remember and easy to dial in darkness. The caller did not have to consider the number of zeros dialed as a connection would be established imminently after the first four.

Pulse dialing

Another reason the number 90 000 was chosen was because the relative ease you could call it without a dial dish through the pulse dialing system. The system worked as follow; you lift the phone handset, push the hookswitch in the

pulse train A pulse train is a sequence of discrete pulses occurring in a signal over time. Typically, these pulses are of similar shape and are evenly spaced in time, forming a periodic or near-periodic sequence. Pulse trains outputs are widely used in tach ...

sequence 10-paus-1-paus-1-paus-1-paus-1. When the sequence have been signalized the switchboard will execute the finalizing parts of the connection. For the new number 112 corresponding sequence will be 2-paus-2-paus-3. An advantage with phone-number 90 000 was the low statistical plausibility that the number would be generated by mistake. The statistical probability for a loose connection, or other types of electrical fault, to achieve the number series 90 000 is very low compared to the number series 112. When the

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telephone company

BT Group BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

introduced 112 to the United Kingdom the number of erroneous calls caused by electrical faults to be 8 million per year, which after technical measures was lowered to 200 000 per year. In relation British BT received about 25 million emergency calls in year 2001.

Criticism

In 2011 criticism was directed towards SOS Alarm on the basis that the operator was considered to have misjudged callers emergency situations. In four cases had the persons in need had died as ambulances was sent too late or not at all. In one of these cases the operator was

indicted An indictment ( ) is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that use the concept of felonies, the most serious criminal offense is a felony; jurisdictions that do not use that concept often use that of an indi ...

for

involuntary manslaughter Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th ce ...

, but was later freed in

district court District courts are a category of courts which exists in several nations, some call them "small case court" usually as the lowest level of the hierarchy. These courts generally work under a higher court which exercises control over the lower co ...

. In the judgment, however, the district court criticized that ambulance had not been sent on basis of the indications the patient had provided.

Organisation

During a normal year SOS Alarm handles 3.8 million calls and 975 000 health matters. During 2017 about one-third of the 3 million incoming calls concurrence non-emergency matters and about 100 000 were prank calls.

References