"Peter Parry" wrote in message
...
For me, a mobile or a cordless phone that I can take with me as I flee
the building is less risky.

Problem with a cordless is that if the RCD trips (which it will as the
fire develops) the phone becomes useless.

Far enough. But a mobile won't suffer from that.

Mobiles give location with varying degrees of accuracy. The basic
service sends the location of the mast being used via a simultaneous
Emergency SMS. This, in remote areas, can encompass a significant
area and in many rural locations is fairly useless. In urban areas
the basic information is quickly enhanced by mast triangulation as the
call is established. Advanced Mobile Location (AML), if available on
your phone operating system, uses GPS and WiFi location data to refine
location more precisely so works well in rural areas. (It works on
Android, not sure about others). Needless to say most emergency
services use different incompatible systems to handle calls. Some use
a data exchange system called EISEC ( Enhanced Information Service for
Emergency Calls) others voice.

I would always use my phone's own GPS, together with an app such as GPS
Status, to give lat/long or OS grid ref, because I know how imprecise the
mobile phone location (triangulation of masts) can be. Our car satnav has a
option (rather obscure menu - need to remind myself where it is) which gives
lat/long and also a sentence describing the location eg "on A64, 1 mile
south west of junction with B1248".

I bet even if you gave them all that info, some of the 999 operators would
still want to know what the postcode was :-(

I once had to give a location relative to my postcode (walker collapsed on a
footpath behind our house) so I said "Go to postcode X on an OS map; go
southeast about 100 metres along the road and there is a footpath that goes
north east from the road. Casualty is along there - on a footpath about 300
metres from the road." Ambulance crew were geared up for the casualty being
in a house, not on a footpath requiring brisk trot carrying equipment. I
think the info that the sharp-end staff get is severely filtered, and
subject to Chinese whispers.

The fixed line phone (not VOIP) on a wire requires no power and the
emergency call handler knows your precise address immediately. You
don't need to register anything. Simple is sometimes much better.

As long as you can reach your phone from where you are calling. It would be
a lot of work to get phone sockets near to any of the three of the main
exits from the house, and then I'd need to get a landline phone for each
socket with a long enough cord to reach from there to the safe space away
from the house.