SOS Alarm Sverige AB is a Swedish publicly owned company that operates emergency number 112 in Sweden. The enterprise is owned equally by the Government of Sweden and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions. History SOS Alarm has its origin in a state investigation regarding the rural telephone automation from 1944. There it was proposed that telephonists should remain at certain switchboard stations even if they were automated. The telephonists would then be able to connect subscribers to the doctor, police, fire brigade, and similar services. After several lengthy state investigations, it was decided in 1956 that the SOS service should be introduce. At this point of time "SOS" is an initialism of "Samhällets olycksfalls- och säkerhetstjänst" or "The community's accident and security service". Calling number 90 00 00 was chosen, which later was changed to 90 000. The number was chosen because it was easy to remember and unlikely to be dialed by mistake (as the numbers 0 and 9 were on opposite side of the rotary dial). Today the emergency number is 112. The first SOS central opened 1956 in Gothenburg. The year after, several others opened in Jönköping, Uppsala, and Östersund. The capital Stockholm got their SOS central in 1958. At the start the SOS service was a referral service where the telephonist forwarded the person in need to respective emergency service according to various lists with on-call doctors and similar. With time the service expanded to also include fire brigades and ambulances. When the subscriber dialed "90 000" on their phone, the number was converted in the telephone exchanges and the telephonist received the call as "90 7XX". The two last digits represented the network junction the call came from, and thereby from which general area the call was made. In 1973 the responsibility for emergency calls was transferred to SOS Alarm, with the state, the Local Authorities Association (Kommunförbundet), and County Council Association (Landstingsförbundet) as owners. The company name at this time was SOSAB, but it was later changed to SOS Alamering AB, and then its current name SOS Alarm Sverige AB. The company was financed with appropriations up until December 1994 and became in 1995 a for-profit company. On June 1, 1996, the then-current emergency number 90 000 was replaced with the pan-European emergency number 112 90 000 90 000 was the phone number to the Swedish emergency service that started in