According to Jornal de Notícias (JN), this new 112 system will
cost 11.5 million euros with almost half of the amount guaranteed by the
Recovery and Resilience Plan. The rest is financed by the next five years State
Budgets, until 31 December 2027.
Currently, whenever someone calls 112 from a mobile phone,
the system in place - Cell ID - only transmits the location of the nearest
antenna, which may be kilometres away from the emergency site. Starting next
year, the exchanges will receive the exact geographic location of the area from
which the emergency call was made. This already happens with landlines.
This new feature will come in very useful in cases where
someone has an emergency and doesn't know exactly where they are.
Portugal currently has 63 call centres. Four are level 1,
for service, and the remaining 59 are for media dispatch.
According to the data collected by the newspaper from the
Ministry of Internal Administration (MAI), the average call response time is
six seconds.