Tandem Computers Inc’s telephone company development and marketing division, Tandem Telecommunications Systems and SCC Inc, a US public safety provider, have announced a joint project to deploy an emergency service based on Tandem’s TSCP-1000 service control point and the company’s Guardian 90 fault-tolerant operating system, both of which are gradually being deployed in intelligent networks. SCC is using the Tandem equipment to migrate its enhanced 911 – that’s what you dial in an emergency in the US – building blocks into the Signalling System 7 intelligent network. The company claims that this will improve the way emergency calls are delivered to the answering agency, the Public Safety Answering Point. Two weeks ago the UK Office of Telecommunications watchdog proposed taking the answering of 999 emergency calls out of the hands of public operators and suggested that an independent agency be set up. The TSCP-1000 service control point is already being deployed in parts of British Telecommunications Plc’s network and designed to provide high-speed query support and call processing logic associated with such intelligent network services such as emergency calls. The TSCP-1000 will be used to enable SCC to evolve its current emergency service system to incorporate speech and data into the fabric of the intelligent network. The service, which SCC sells to US telephone service providers, will enable automatic location, identification and selective routing database and real-time graphical mapping interface for management of the selective routing database. It’s all change everywhere in emergency numbers, and the European Commission wants all Community countries to switch to a new common one.
