Can’t dial 100 from some Nokia phones

If you use a slightly older model of a Nokia phone, chances are that you will not be able to call the police, fire department or an ambulance.

If you use a slightly older model of a Nokia phone, chances are that you will not be able to call the police, fire department or an ambulance.

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Pankaj Bhambani, a Janakpuri resident, found it out the hard way.

Last week, while waiting for his wife’s night drop cab at 11.30 on the deserted Vidhya Marg at Janakpuri, Bhambani saw an SUV crashing into another car.

Occupants of both vehicles came out and the SUV owner smashed the other car’s windscreen with a rod.

"Realising that the situation was going to get worse, I decided to call police control room. I dialled 100 from my Nokia handset C2-01 but was unable to get through. I heard the message, the ‘dialled number does not exist’,” Bhambani said.

He tried dialling 100 again from his wife’s Nokia 2690 handset but the same thing happened.

"When I called a Nokia helpline, they said there are issues with some models such as C2-01, X3 and 2690 and one can’t dial 100 for police, 101 for fire or 102 for an ambulance from these phones,” he said.

A Nokia spokesperson admitted there was a problem with some older handsets.

"We are working towards a resolution,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said in the US and Europe, emergency numbers such as 911 are configured in the handsets and a user can call these numbers with or without a SIM on a priority basis.

"Though as per TRAI regulations this is not mandatory in India, till a few months back we proactively configured ‘100’, ‘101’ and ‘102’ as emergency numbers across our devices and consumers could dial the numbers with a SIM from their home operator networks if the latter provided the service,” the spokesperson said.

However, for the emergency call feature to work, implementation is required on the part of both the device vendor and the operator.