Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tive on Emer­gen­cy Calls

The Technical Directive on Emergency Calls (TR Notruf) was published in the Bundesnetzagentur's Official Gazette No 12 of 22 June 2011 (Administrative Order No 42/2011) in accordance with section 108(4) of the Telecommunications Act (TKG).

Administrative Order No 42/2011 - Technical Directive on Emergency Calls

Technical Directive on Emergency Calls - Version 1

The Ordinance on Emergency Calls (NotrufV) of 6 March 2009 (Federal Law Gazette I page 481), as last amended by Article 1 of the Act of 26 November 2012 (Federal Law Gazette I page 2347), requires additional coding options for transmitting location data in accordance with Annex N3 to the Technical Directive:

Supplement Technical Directive Annex N3

The Technical Directive (Version 1.0) regulates the transition from the current procedure of routing emergency calls according to the caller's local telephone network to the procedure of basing call routing on the caller's district, to be introduced in 2013. This transition will not affect subscribers of traditional circuit-switched telephone services with analogue or ISDN landlines. Emergency calls from these lines will be routed on the basis of the caller's local network until such circuit-switched services are discontinued.

The Technical Directive lays down the technical details for connecting emergency calls to the emergency service centres in operation, irrespective of the transmission and switching technologies used in the originating and transit networks. Emergency service centres are currently equipped with ISDN lines only. The Technical Directive lays down the technical characteristics of these lines. It also specifies the procedure and the various formats for transmitting location information in the form of an address or a description with geographical coordinates. The requirement to transmit location information was introduced on 23 December 2012. Non-compliance with this requirement may be punishable by a fine as provided for by section 149(2) of the Telecommunications Act.

The Technical Directive was drawn up with the participation of associations, emergency service centre operator representatives nominated by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, and manufacturers, taking due account of international standards and justifying any deviations from the standards. The Technical Directive was drawn up on the basis of a draft published in the Bundesnetzagentur's Official Gazette No 20 of 20 October 2010 (Communication No 566/2010).

Draft Technical Directive on Emergency Calls and the evaluation of the comments received from those required to participate in drawing up the Directive, as specified in section 108(4) sentence 1 of the Telecommunications Act, and those subject to the obligation of section 108(1) sentence 2 of the Act.

The following steps were taken before issuing the Technical Directive:

Communication No 577/2008, Implementation of section 150(9a) of the 2004 Telecommunications Act: emergency calls in technically new publicly available telephone services, retrieval of information from network operators and telephone service providers

• Administrative Order No 06/2009, Transitional provision for catchment area boundaries and register structure
• Administrative Order No 29/2009, Transitional provision for emergency call routing – amendment to table in Administrative Order No 06/2009
• Administrative Order No 23/2009, Emergency calls to 112 from mobile phones are only possible with a SIM card inserted
• Administrative Order No 68/2009, Discontinuation until further notice of transmission of the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) instead of the mobile phone number where the number is not available
• Communication No 538/2009, Consultation on a planned regulatory order on informing end customers about possible restrictions for emergency calls in technically new publicly available telephone services
• Communication No 372/2010, A regulatory order on informing end customers about possible restrictions for emergency calls in technically new publicly available telephone services was not issued: Directive 2009/136/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2009 required a comprehensive reassessment of the matter and revision of section 108 of the Telecommunications Act.