<story><title>Suicide Prevention Hotline Number Should Be 3 Digits, 988, Agency Says</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/us/suicide-prevention-hotline-988.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jaclaz</author><text>As a side note, in Italy (and in some other countries) the &amp;quot;emergency&amp;quot; numbers have historically been 112 and 113 for two  reasons:&lt;p&gt;1) you could dial them also on old rotary phones with a lock on the dial disc (the lock was put on the &amp;quot;three finger hole&amp;quot;) but of course now it makes no sense anymore&lt;p&gt;2) they were easier to &amp;quot;dial&amp;quot; without dialing but tapping on the &amp;quot;hang&amp;quot; buttons&lt;p&gt;Nowadays 112 is the &amp;quot;unique&amp;quot; emergency number across all EU and many nearby countries:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers#Europe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_emergency_telephone_nu...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Suicide Prevention Hotline Number Should Be 3 Digits, 988, Agency Says</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/us/suicide-prevention-hotline-988.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>LinuxBender</author><text>Great idea.  B-number routing changes are straight forward.  Some questions they would need to figure out is:&lt;p&gt;- Where are we routing this&lt;p&gt;- When the target is full, which hotlines do we route to and in what order (load balancing)&lt;p&gt;- Will this use e911 coordinate forwarding?  i.e. what privacy controls will be in place&lt;p&gt;- Will this get priority override on cell networks?  i.e. bump non 988 calls when cell site is full, but not bump 911 or first responders.  (GSM capability)&lt;p&gt;There are probably a few other details that would need to be sorted, but it should be easy from a technical stand-point.</text></comment>