"Davidm" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 3 Jun 2021 14:28:30 -0700 (PDT), Mathew Newton
wrote:

On Thursday, 3 June 2021 at 21:21:37 UTC+1, NY wrote:
I was impressed when my wife called in an accident while we were driving
on
the A1 a few years ago. The emergency operator didn't need to be told
where
we were and said "ah yes, I can see you've just passed the turning to
Kirk
Smeaton, heading north". The phone had its GPS turned on (we were
recording
a track on Viewranger) so I wonder if the location is automatically
passed
to the 999 operator if GPS is enabled.

Yes, it's called Advanced Mobile Location (AML). It's been supported in
the UK for a number of years now as BT (who run the first line operator
assistance centres) were one of its developers.

Google's implementation (in Android) is called Emergency Location Service
(ELS) and there's a bit of info about how it works he

https://crisisresponse.google/emerge.../how-it-works/

It seems that it does rely on you having mobile data on your phone turned
on.

No it doesn't with the enhanced 999 service etc.

As I'm just on a payg arrangement (not even a contract) I don't
normally have it switched on, ever since on holiday one year and
loosing £40 of credit overnight when the bloody phone decided
to do a software update over a slow link (cruise ship).

Better designed phones allow you to specify that they don't
update using mobile data, only when wifi is available.