Northern Cape, 300m underground
Thomas drops his drill.
He doesn't know who to call.
He grabs a colleague's phone.
Dials Void. Says "first aid."
Connected.
◎ VOID
Listening
Void is a voice directory. Dial the number, say what you need, and Void finds the right contact to connect you.
No app, data plan, account, or smartphone is needed for a caller. A voice call is enough.
Void indexes emergency services across 236 countries, then routes people to the most relevant number it can find.
Void has paths for individuals, families, developers, and organisations that need voice routing for teams.
The rest of the page explains what callers dial, what happens after they speak, what is free, and what businesses or developers can use.
Reach people and emergency services from any phone, anywhere on earth.
Void is a global voice-activated directory. Speak a name or emergency type and we find and connect the call. No internet, app, or smartphone required.
Void helps people find the right emergency or personal contact when they do not know who to call. Pick the path that matches you.
You never need the app to call Void. On your own phone, it adds location-aware emergency access, in-app calling over Wi-Fi or data, emergency contacts, Traveler Mode, Safety Check-ins, and privacy controls.
No app, account, or data plan is required for the ordinary phone-call experience.
Void can be used directly by callers, added to products through the API, or deployed as a managed voice number for teams.
Dial from any working phone and say what you need. Void searches its directory and routes the call when it finds a match. No app, data, or account is needed for the caller.
Send a natural-language query or GPS coordinates and receive the best-matched emergency contact in JSON. Your app handles the user experience and telephony; Void handles the directory lookup.
Give workers a dedicated number they can dial from any handset. They speak a name or incident type, and Void routes them without app installs, smartphone access, or long training.
The same thing plays out every day, in different countries, on different phones.
Thomas drops his drill.
He doesn't know who to call.
He grabs a colleague's phone.
Dials Void. Says "first aid."
Connected.
Wallet gone. Data gone. Phone gone.
A stranger hands her his phone.
She doesn't speak Thai.
Dials Void. Says "police."
Connected. In English.
She's shaking. She's Romanian.
She doesn't know the South African number.
She grabs the officer's radio phone.
Dials Void. Says "ambulance."
Connected.
Your phone is with your daughter.
She's at a friend's house. Something happens.
She doesn't know your number by heart.
She opens Void. Says "call my dad."
Connected.
If your product or workforce touches safety, Void fills the gap.
Field operatives across SA speak a name or incident type and get connected instantly. No app, no fumbling for numbers under pressure.
Underground and remote workers reach emergency services or control rooms immediately. Void replaces laminated number cards that no one reads in a crisis.
Return the nearest emergency contact for any destination in real time. One API call replaces outdated static lookup tables across 236 countries.
Drivers and farm workers in remote areas reach emergency services without knowing local numbers or having internet access.
Offer a value-added service to subscribers. Speak a name or emergency type, get connected on any handset, no data required.
Embed real-time emergency routing into SOS features, wearables, or corporate duty-of-care products.
Sourced from OpenStreetMap, Overture Maps, and national databases.
If something isn't covered here, email us at dboysen@voidtech.co.za.
For Hosted Voice deployments, you get a dedicated phone number for your business. Workers dial that number from any handset. For API integrations, you provision the number yourself through any telephony provider (Twilio, Vonage, Africa's Talking, etc.) and point its webhook at the Void API. The API resolves the query and returns the correct number to connect to.
No. Void works on any voice call: a feature phone, a borrowed handset, a desk phone, a satellite phone. The only requirement is a functioning cellular or landline signal. No app, no data plan, no internet connection required on the caller's end.
The directory covers 236 countries with 725,000+ emergency service records: police, ambulance, fire, coastguard, mountain rescue, and specialist responders. 5,600+ are individually verified (government sources, confirmed dispatch lines, or manually checked); the rest is sourced from OpenStreetMap and Overture Maps and updated continuously. Coverage is strongest in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Use the coverage bars on this page for region-level detail.
Phone numbers in the People Registry are encrypted at rest using AES-256. Only a one-way hash is used for lookups. The plaintext number is never stored in a searchable index or exposed in any API response. You can remove yourself permanently at any time using the deletion form on this page.
The Data API is for developers and platforms. You send a query (text or coordinates) and receive the best-matched emergency contact in JSON. You handle the telephony yourself. Hosted Voice is a fully managed deployment: Void provisions a phone number for your business, handles speech recognition, routing, and connection. Your workers just dial and speak. No coding required.
The API returns a result in under 200ms at median. End-to-end for a Hosted Voice call (dial, speak, connect) is typically under 5 seconds depending on speech recognition latency and network conditions.
Yes. The free tier gives you 500 API calls per month with no credit card required. It includes full access to the emergency directory across all 236 countries. Upgrade when your usage grows or you need the People Registry and higher rate limits.
No. Void is a directory service. It finds and routes you to the right number. It is not an emergency dispatch operator. In a life-threatening situation, if you know your local emergency number, call it directly. Use Void when you are in an unfamiliar country, don't know the right number, or need the nearest geo-located service. Always verify critical numbers before relying on them in operational safety systems.
Pay per query for the API. Fixed monthly deployment for Hosted Voice.
Anyone who calls the Void number and says your name gets connected directly to your phone, from any device, anywhere in the world.
The API takes a natural language query and returns the best-matched contact, whether an emergency service or a person, in a single round trip.
Most people, in the worst moment of their lives, don't know what number to call.
Emergency numbers are different in every country, every region, sometimes every city. 999 works in the UK but not Nigeria. 112 works across Europe but not everywhere. In South Africa there are over a dozen numbers depending on whether you need police, ambulance, or a specific private response company. Most people only know the one they learned as a child.
I built Void because that fragmentation costs lives. One number, spoken in any language, should connect you to the right help anywhere on earth, on any phone, with or without data.
I started in South Africa, where the gap between needing help and knowing who to call is most visible. The directory now covers 236 countries. There is a lot more to do.
Devago Boysen · Founder, Void Technologies · Pretoria, South Africa · 2026
500 free API calls every month. Upgrade when you're ready. Enterprise deals for carriers and OEMs, just reach out.
We'll send a verification code to your number. Once confirmed, your name, phone number, and all associated data are permanently deleted.