Originally Posted by
Roger
No. It's valid in the US but only on GSM cellphones and it's certainly not global.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_telephone_number - scan down to 'Emergency numbers'.
Gosh, not even 'global' in North America. The USA and Canada have 911 and Mexico has 066, 060, or 080.
GSM (which stands for GLOBAL Spec for Mobile or something like that)
is global, including the USA, as you note. I'm not sure how you can say it's "certainly not global," -- when was the last time you went somewhere where there was no GSM coverage? Given that you can find GSM coverage
here,
here, and
here, amongst many other places, I think its fairly accurate to refer to GSM as "global".