Emergency workers searching for next-of-kin information for an injured person now have a globally recognised way of doing so, through a new standard from the ITU. Simply prefixing 01, 02, 03 and so on to a nominated contact, such as '01father', '02wife' or '03husband' written in any script in the mobile telephone directory will enable emergency workers in any part of the world to identify contacts in order of priority and notify them

In some English-speaking countries , 'In Case of Emergency' - or ICE - has emerged, encouraging the public to list emergency contact numbers in their mobile phone in the form of 'ICE father', for example, or 'ICE doctor'. However, helpers who do not use or recognize the Roman script may not recognize the term.Now the ITU will work with the non-profit organization ICE4SAFETY to promote the new method of identifying emergency contacts.

The new standard, which is a clause to the ITU-T Recommendation E.123, internationalizes the ICE concept and recommends the use of Arabic numerals (0 to 9) to denote emergency contact numbers in a handsets directory. It exploits the fact that even though written scripts differ around the world these digits are universally recognized, making it usable by anyone, regardless of language or script.

For more information see www.ice4safety.com

My phone doesn't show the callers name any more
This will be because your ICE contact number is a duplicate entry of another contact in your phone book. If you have two numbers the same, your phone won't know which one to display so it will show just the number. To get round this, simply type a * after the number under your ICE contact. It will still work and will cure the caller-ID problem.