There’s been some chatter on Twitter and Facebook (News - Alert) that dialing 112 in the United States is a way to reach public safety for non-life-threatening issues. A slightly more casual 911, if you will. But just to be clear: The rumor is false.

“What often confuses users, are the stories of where 112 actually connected people with public safety,” admitted Mark J. Fletcher on the Avaya blog.

“But the fact of the matter is that, even though the device may recognize it as an emergency number, and the cellular network has provisions within its numbering and routing plan to accept 112, in the end it's being converted to 911 prior to delivery to the E911 network,” he added.

That’s because the PSTN network is pointing 112 to 911 in some instances. The number actually dialed is irrelevant, however, so public safety does not have a way to distinguish between a cat-in-the-tree 112 call and a serial-killer-in-my-bedroom 911 call. When dialing 112 works, it just passes the call straight to 911.

“Even though the device may recognize it as an emergency number, and the cellular network has provisions within its numbering and routing plan to accept 112, in the end it's being converted to 911 prior to delivery to the E911 network,” wrote Fletcher. “In fact, the 911 call taker has absolutely no indication if a caller dialed the digits 911, or dialed 112.”

Programming 112 to reach 911 public safety services is an easy trick with the Avaya (News - Alert) CM and CM 1000. Prior to sending the call down the trunk facility, he noted, it is easy enough to retranslate the 112 digits to 911 so the PSTN network then recognizes the call as an emergency.

That does not make 112 a light version of 911, though.

“But it makes for a good story, and after all we have to keep the Twitter (News - Alert)-verse alive and buzzing in 140 character snippets,” he noted.

The whole business of using telephone numbers for emergency services is a little old-school for Fletcher, though.

“Telephone numbers are really too 80s-ish for me,” he wrote on the blog. “At some point in time, in the not too distant future, they will probably just go away, and be replaced with DNS names for people and something more universal like SOS (News - Alert) for emergency calls.”

But for this to become a reality, advanced Emergency Services IP Networks (ESInet) would need to exist and be interconnected from the local, regional and global perspective, he wrote.