The objective of implementing the pan-European in-vehicle emergency call system (eCall) is to automate the notification of a traffic accident, wherever in Europe, with the same technical standards and the same quality of services objectives by using ‘Public Land Mobile Networks’(PLMN), which supports the European pre-assigned emergency destination address (see normative references) and to provide a means of manually triggering the notification of an incident.

This document specifies the general operating requirements and intrinsic procedures for in-vehicle emergency call (eCall) services in order to transfer an emergency message from a vehicle to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) in the event of a crash or emergency, via an eCall communication session and to establish a voice channel between the in-vehicle equipment and the PSAP.

Private third party in-vehicle emergency supporting services can also provide a similar eCall function by other means. The provision of such services are defined in EN 16102, and are outside the scope of this document.

The communications protocols and methods for the transmission of the MSD are not specified in this document.

This document specifies the operating requirements for an eCall service. An important part of the eCall service is a Minimum Set of Data (MSD). The operating requirements for the MSD are determined in this document, but the form and data content of the MSD is not defined herein. A common European MSD is determined in EN 15722.

This document does not specify whether eCall is provided using embedded equipment or other means (for example in the case of aftermarket equipment).