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I've been confused about how Brazil has more than a dozen of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Brazil#Public_utility https://en.wikipedi
by schoen 7y ago
I've been confused about how Brazil has more than a dozen of these
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Brazil#Public_utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Brazil#Pu...
(I don't think this list is complete!). It's hard for me to think that many Brazilians remember all of these -- the Wikipedia article suggests that most don't -- and it's also unclear to me, for example, how one should choose which police force to call when needing police assistance.
On the other hand, perhaps several of these were created in order to provide a free call option for accessing public services, and in some cases one that would be usable by functionally illiterate citizens.
- CydeWeys 7y agoWow, that's way too many. Unless each number is going to be targeted with a long-term awareness campaign (as 311 and 911 are, and as the suicide hotline number is likely to be), it's hard to justify them. No one's gonna remember them.
- schoen 7y agoI saw a printed chart of them in a payphone in Brazil (which seems genuinely useful if the reader knows how to distinguish, for example, which police force to contact in an emergency), but payphones are also becoming rarer in Brazil and I'm not sure that the list of these numbers is ubiquitous.