community

Now when will we get ICE / ECU?

After years of off and on wrangling, mainly featuring public agencies and a private phone company struggling to maximize their respective incomes behind this or that contrived technical objection, Panama's National Assembly finally passed a 911 emergency phone call service.

Soon anybody facing an emergency in which an ambulance, the police or the bomberos must be summoned will be able to dial 911 from any telephone and be directed to the right place. The price of all telecommunications services will soon go up one percent, that being the amount of a tax created to fund the system's operation.

So how soon is "soon?" Well, although the legislature approved the law on third and final reading on October 30, President Torrijos still has to sign it, which he is expected to do. Then he has to appoint a director of the SUME 911 system. (The 911 law's principal boosters, the 20-30 Club, had been working on the issue for several years and wanted to depoliticize the system, but the legislators insisted upon making the director a political appointee.)

Although the law was passed with a provision for immediate effect, after the director is hired, one or more offices must be obtained, the telecommunications apparatuses need to be installed, operators need to be trained and the public has to be informed about what the system is and is not for.

If the system is not up and running this time next year, people should be surprised and annoyed. To see it working before the end of the year would be a pleasant surprise.

So what took so long? Well, things like Cable & Wireless and its boosters insisting on maintaining certain aspects of that phone company's illegal monopoly. In the end, legislators inserted a provision that C&W couldn't impose a connection fee on competitors for 911 calls.

The expected turf battles among the various services that respond to emergencies were likely resolved by the creation of SUME 911 under a presidentially appointed director. However, we won't know until the system is in place and running what, if any, further bureaucratic power plays await us.

A potential corporate and intra-governmental plum will be created, in that companies will be required to submit databases to SUME 911 so the person or company to whom a particular phone line or cell number is registered can be readily identified. Theoretically this information will be confidential, which would by the usual way things go raise the price of its illegal sale. And of course, with a loyal political appointee in charge, the ruling political party's campaign phone banks will be tempted to get this information from the system.

Any ordinary person abusing the system, such as by making frivolous calls, will be subject to criminal prosecution. The legislation also includes new and probably redundant criminal penalties for vandalizing public phones upon which many communities depend in emergencies.

While Panama is decades behind the industrialized countries in adopting the 911 emergency number system and we were one of the last countries in the Americas to get cell phone service, for a number of reasons Panamanians of all social classes have embraced cell phones, to the point that many people and small businesses have no other telephone service. In any case, as cell phones become ever more ubiquitous, that has created new possibilities for people with emergencies and the services that respond to crises.

The stories of skiers or mountain climbers stranded by avalanches calling for help on cell phones, or people with broken down boats summoning help, are no longer novel. Nor is it all that unusual for an ambulance crew to pick up a person unconcious from a heart attack, stroke or traumatic accident and find a cell phone in the patient's possession.

In the latter case, there is a growing movement in the United States for a person to program the phone number of his or her next of kin or closest friend into a cell phone under the code ICE --- In Case of Emergency. That allows an emergency responder to inform the family using the victim's cell phone. ICE is now being promoted and regulated by law in some states, and is such a simple and sensible idea that it seems sure to spread including with or without government recognition to Panama.

Or course, this is a Spanish-speaking country and "in case of emergency" translates to "en caso de urgencia." So will we render it as "ECU?" The problem with that is that in English "ICE" means something so is easy to remember, while in Spanish "ECU" doesn't mean anything in particular. Might we end up borrowing the American standard, like we have from many other things? Might we dither about it for a few decades like we have done about 911?

ICE does not depend on a government bureaucracy for its existence, nor other than the cost of a phone call upon the policies of a phone company for its use. Its adoption in Panama depends instead upon a social consensus on what the code ought to be (ICE, ECU or something else) and upon the agreement of emergency responders to make use of it. There's room to dither about this, but not as much as there has been over 911. Look for ICE or something like it to catch on in Panama.