Emergency Identifiers Mailing List Summary Interim Meeting, Washington DC, Feb. 2006

There are location-dependent and universal emergency identifiers. Universal emergency identifiers are, for example, the SOS URIs introduced in the SIPPPING-SOS draft. Location-dependent emergency identifiers (or emergency dialstrings) are those that are used today in specific countries (see, for example, Dialstrings refers to the digit sequence dialed in to reach emergency services. Location-dependent emergency identifiers might be further categorized into –'home' emergency dialstrings (with respect to a specific user) and –emergency dialstrings used in the geographic vicinity the user finds himself in (referred to 'visted' emergency dialstrings).

The SIP UA should translate home emergency dialstrings to universal emergency identifiers. The UA is most likely pre- provisioned with this information to be able to make such a translation. A mechanism to dynamically provision the user's home emergency dialstrings MUST be provided.

The SIP UA should translate visited emergency dialstrings to the universal emergency identifier. A mechanism to allow the end device to learn visited emergency dialstrings MUST be available. There are scenarios where a user dials a visited emergency dialstring (that is different from the home emergency dialstring): –If somebody visits a foreign country and sees a firetruck with 999 on the side, he or she expects to be able to dial that number and summon that fire truck (or its cousin); –There's the "tourist collapses, good samaritan finds tourist cell phone and dials local emergency number" case.