Key Highlights from our E911 FAQ
Jose Alvarado, E911 sales engineer, lends his expertise to this helpful Q&A where we tackle the top questions we’re asked when companies are faced with implementing. Questions covered (with abbreviated responses) are summarized below.
What is E911?
E911 or Enhanced 911 is an enhancement to the existing 911 service to provide location information along with the call to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP).
Why does Unified Communications and the cloud create issues in reaching 911 services?
Jose covers issues including:
• Phone mobility
• Inaccurate/imprecise location data
• Multiple phone systems
• SIP trunking
• Off-site users
• Lack of integration with security teams
Intrado’s Emergency Routing Service can support a dynamic environment which includes teleworkers, allows enterprises to update their records in real-time, and eliminates the need to maintain local trunks and gateways to the providers.
What are the regulations that enterprises must comply with?
Hear explanations of Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM and learn how they impact dispatchable location and 911 accessibility for MLTS phone systems. In addition to the federal laws, some states may have their own specific requirements in addition to federal regulations.
What happens if businesses don’t comply?
Companies can incur reputational damage, fines, and – most importantly – the potential loss of human lives and the consequences of such actions.
What key things should businesses companies keep in mind when reviewing their E911 strategy?
At Intrado Life and Safety, we have more than 40 years of 911 experience with more than 70 million VoIP records under our management. Not only we provide enterprise and carrier grade services, but our government solutions team provides PSAP equipment as well. We also own and manage our own backbone infrastructure and our U.S based Emergency Call Relay Center, providing a truly end-to-end 911 solution.
Beyond E911, what should enterprises be doing to further ensure safety and prepare for the future?
After coming into compliance, it's important to not just forget about 911 services. Proactively manage 911 new locations, new users, and test to ensure accurate info is passed to right psaps.
Create overall emergency response plan (erp), leverage new technologies for enhanced safety; may need to evolve plans because of overwhelming shift to work from home.
It’s important for businesses to have the right tools to share timely information with the appropriate people. Unified mass notification solutions that offer multi-modal notification methods can help businesses streamline their entire emergency communication process by simultaneously alerting people located within and beyond the facility (via phone, email, desktop, etc), initiate incident management protocols, and share critical safety information with PSAPs and first responders. But make sure there are various redundancy capabilities to avoid single points of failure so you won’t be left without notification options during a critical moment.
At Intrado, we can provide a full spectrum of critical-event solutions to keep your patients, students, employees and communities safe and healthy.
