users are allocated numbers 12-14. During an emergency, some or all access classes in the range 0 - 9 are disabled. If the overload condition continues, mobiles with access classes level 10, 11, then 12 and so on may also be disabled by the cellular network operator. In the United States, Verizon Wireless uses access classes 0-1 for emergency as well as Government-privileged use. As MTPAS would be a frustration to normal network users in case of network overload, in Britain it is normally only initiated after careful consideration. The authority of a British police "gold" commander is required (major incident control is named in three tiers in the UK, gold, silver and bronze, in accordance with the London Emergency Services Liaison Panel, a group responsible for creating best-agreed procedures for dealing with various emergency situations) after consideration with the co-ordinating group. The police gold commander will speak to dedicated staff at the mobile network operator, and this will be followed up by a specially designed fax message, in accordance with the Home Office document "Process for the Management of the Mobile Telecommunications Privileged Access Scheme (MTPAS)". The police gold commander's proforma fax reads: "This message serves to advise you that a Strategic Command Group (SCG) is being established in response to a major incident in the UK. As a result of the incident, your network may experience an abnormally high concentration of calls. If your network becomes congested, your assistance is requested to provide customers with SIMs allocated to classes 12, 13 and 14 a much higher likelihood of being able to make calls than customers allocated to other classes.", and gives space for the police to identify the geographic location of the incident. Not all calling by regular mobiles is prevented. Calls to an emergency services number (911, 112, 999) will ignore all MTPAS or global action messages. References External links Responding to emergencies in Scotland, 12. Emergency services communication PageOne Communications: Two-way Pagers are MTPAS enabled Emergency management in the United Kingdom History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom Mobile telecommunications standards