The project, which also will affect the city's inquiry services, is expected to cost between $10 million and $12 million.
The quality of the special service numbers has long irritated Muscovites.
"Our emergency service numbers work appallingly," City Duma Deputy Stepan Orlov, who deals with communications and information technology issues, said Wednesday. "We get a constant stream of complaints. People can't call an ambulance, the fire brigade or the police -- often the line goes dead."
MGTS says that old equipment is the cause and that the move to digital technology will solve the problem.
"The call centers we are currently using are all analog; they are often overloaded and can't always guarantee the quality needed," said MGTS first deputy general director Semyon Rabovsky.
Three call centers are allocated for the city's emergency and inquiry services. The centers receive signals from all telephone stations in Moscow and transfer them to dispatcher points for the corresponding special service. One switchboard already has been modernized.
"The new technology allows us to cope with just one switchboard. But we plan to modernize all three," Rabovsky said. "For a reliable service, it is best to have a reserve."
The numbers 01, 02, 03 and 04 belong to the emergency services, while 05 is for inquiries and 06 is for the Central Telegraph. The number 08 is used for international calls, and operators in other cities use 07 to inquire about Moscow numbers, while 09 is for MGTS's inquiry service and 00 is not used. Besides modernizing the emergency network, there are plans to merge services into a single number, along the lines of 112 in Europe and 911 in the United States.
The Emergency Situations Ministry is lobbying this idea in the City Duma.
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