dash Carrier Services, a provider of Tier-one emergency services and wholesale carrier voice solutions, was last in the news when it announced its participation in the ICE 3 event, an NG9-1-1 industry collaboration. ICE 3, in which dash Carrier Services participated, was conducted by NENA at Bryan, Texas. The primary focus of the event was location information, which is one of the key data elements in the operation of NG9-1-1 for call routing.

According to a press release, 13 companies participated in this event and evaluated multi-vendor interaction between the following functional elements, namely emergency call routing functions, emergency services routing proxies, and location information servers.

With dash Carrier Services’ experience in the development of a nationwide NG9-1-1 emergency communications framework that supports multiple voice technologies on a single platform, Bandwidth.com (News - Alert), a nationwide supplier of VoIP network services to Skype, Pinger, etc., positioned itself well by acquiring the E911 hosted solutions provider, today, Feb. 23. It will now package advanced services, such as E911 calling, with its core voice and SMS offerings to deliver a stronger experience for customers who were previously coupling together these services in less efficient ways.

VoIP services such as Skype (News - Alert) will need to add services like E911 calling as VoIP adoption continues to accelerate, and with the joining of Bandwidth.com and dash Carrier Services, these VoIP services can utilize next generation E911 solutions, including new mediums (such as IM and SMS) and real-time location-based call delivery.

In a statement, David Morken, CEO of Bandwidth.com, commented, “Emergency services are a critical component in the continued growth of VoIP adoption as users increasingly will expect their new communication applications to offer the same reliability and functionality, including emergency services, as found in their legacy telephony solutions.”

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.

VoIP services, such as Skype, Pinger (News - Alert), etc., aren’t the only service providers positioning themselves for an increase in E911 regulations. Whether your state has passed E911 legislation or not, any enterprise and service provider needs 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. 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.