[asterisk-users] Dial-9 (was Extension Numbering)

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Sat, Sep 30, 2006 at 01:40:09PM +0100, Gordon Henderson wrote:
> Here in the UK, I've installed several small systems without a dial-9 for
> an outside line type thing. The outside line prefix is effectively digit
> zero. (which is preserved and dialled on the outgoing zap lines)
> 
> There is an exception for 999, and I still provide the 9 service too for

This reminds me of something that's bothered me for years, and I'm
curious how people deal with it.  This is semi-US specific; don't say
you weren't warned (or that I'm Americo-centric :-).

Using 9 as a dialplan prefix for accessing outside dialtone has one
*major* problem: 911.

You don't *really* want to (and I believe, legally, you can't) require
people to dial 9-911.  But, this leads you to an alternate problem.

If you define 911 in your internal dialplan as a cut-through to dial the
local PSAP over a standard local voice line (and here, I'm assuming you
have some; VoN 911 is a topic I entirely don't want to get into at the
moment), then eventually you're going to have either a) a touchtone<tm>
dial that stutters on it's 1 key, or b) a human who does it, and they're
going to dial 9-1-800-555-1212, and find themselves talking the EMS
instead of directory assistance... and no one will understand why...
and the EMS people will be mad at *you*.

I know that this has been a problem for traditional PBXen for years,
and the only solution I've ever been able to see is "use 8 as your
outdial prefix"... but no one seems to ever do that, even 20 years on.

Is this really not a problem?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
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