SUBSCRIBE TO TMCnet
TMCnet - World's Largest Communications and Technology Community

CHANNEL BY TOPICS


QUICK LINKS




911 ETC Looking to Solve Your E911 Legislation Concerns with Its E911 Hosted Solution

TMCnews


TMCnews Featured Article


February 07, 2011

911 ETC Looking to Solve Your E911 Legislation Concerns with Its E911 Hosted Solution

By Jaclyn Allard, TMCnet Web Editor


Twenty one states currently have E911 legislation enacted or pending, which requires organizations over a certain size or purchasing a new PBX (News - Alert) to implement an E911 hosted solution for the safety of their employees, students, and visitors. Many of these state legislations implement their legislation using the proposed NENA legislation as a model.


The NENA model of legislation explains, “The digits 9-1-1 are designated as the emergency telephone number. Enhancements to the 9-1-1 system typically enable the caller’s telephone number and billing number to be displayed to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). As a result, when the caller is calling from a single-line telephone or multi-line telephone system (MLTS) serving a compact area, the address associated with the caller’s telephone number can be retrieved and usually provides a reasonably precise identification of the caller’s location. The purpose of this model legislation is to require MLTS to provide a sufficiently précised indication of the caller’s location, while avoiding the imposition of undue burdens on system manufacturers, providers and operators.”

Whether your state has passed E911 legislation or not, enterprises need to think about the liability issues that result from incorrect or inadequate information being transmitted in the event of an emergency. Today E911 hosted solutions are inexpensive. Nonetheless, a lot of enterprises have not done a thing to implement an E911 hosted solution. Andrew M. Brown, partner at Levine, Blaszak, Block & Boothby, LLP and Voice Report publisher, George David, recently discussed a reason for this. Brown pointed out that the old technical problems facing enterprises trying to implement an E911 hosted solution was that they had anywhere between 40 to 4,000 work stations behind their PBX, but today, enterprises are realizing that they could possibly have 40,000 users using mobile devices that have VoIP capabilities over a SIP-trunking solution and they have no idea where all these users are going to be on any given day. As David pointed out, this makes the E911 hosted solution considerably more complicated.  

But, in the next few years, more states are expected to adopt E911 rules on MLTS and at a much faster rate. Therefore, businesses should look to legislation first to find out what they should do and understand the basic requirements incorporated in the pieces of recently passed E911 legislation.  Businesses should also develop a compliance plan and minimize any likelihood of an emergency situation. Brown suggests the following five steps in moving towards a proper E911 hosted solution:

  1. Understand and incorporate requirements common to E911 legislation
  2. Maintain reasonable flexibility 
  3. Balance potential cost savings with accessibility limitations for 911 services
  4. Be careful about relying on alternative 911 calling solutions
  5. Think about implementing non-technology based solutions to reduce liability

911 ETC, a provider of E911 hosted solutions for the enterprise and SMB markets, has taken the E911 hosted solutions industry by storm as E911 legislation becomes a priority nationwide. It appears there are few hurdles for this E911 hosted solutions provider, as they recently revealed a strategic partnership with Carousel Industries of North America. The partnership is set to focus on providing enterprises with E911 hosted solution services for PBX and IP-PBX. Other strategic partnerships of 2010, helping to bring in the New Year, include Cross Telecom and Avaya (News - Alert) Connect.

With continuing compliance laws, it does not go unnoticed that the company was asked to join the National Association of State Technology Directors in 2011 as their corporate E911 affiliate, illustrating its capability in meeting and supporting these compliance laws.

Among its other recent achievements, 911 ETC achieved certification for Aura Communication Manager with Avaya DevConnect (News - Alert). It launched a new application allowing location provisioning of soft phones, called SoftLoc, which has already made an impact on the E911 hosted solutions of top enterprises. And to continue its streak of success, 911 ETC’s founder, Larry Scott, was honored with the “Industry Leader Award” by the E911 Congressional Caucus.

911 ETC is aware of the E911 hosted solution hurdles an enterprise fears, and advises that you make yourself aware of state legislation and the benefits an E911 hosted solution can bring to your enterprise with or without the pressure of such state legislation.


Jaclyn Allard is a TMCnet copy editor. She most recently worked on the production team at Juran Institute, a quality consulting firm producing its own training and marketing materials. Previously, she interned at Curbstone Press, a nonprofit publishing press in Willimantic, CT, and fulfilled the role of Editor-in-Chief for the literature and arts journal published by the University of Connecticut. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jaclyn Allard







Technology Marketing Corporation

2 Trap Falls Road Suite 106, Shelton, CT 06484 USA
Ph: +1-203-852-6800, 800-243-6002

General comments: [email protected].
Comments about this site: [email protected].

STAY CURRENT YOUR WAY

© 2024 Technology Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy