E911 Hosted Solutions Featured Article

As of February 2012, the Next Generation 911 Advancement Act became law. A portion of that law requires the FCC (News - Alert) to seek comment on the feasibility of MLTS in providing the “precise location of a 911 caller and the National Emergency Number Association’s technical document on model legislation E911 for MLTS.” The comments will likely include E911 hosted solutions as a point of focus.

According to this MCC Mag report, MLTSs serve many telephone stations at one customer site, such as a company’s main office or a college campus. The problem with this scenario is that when a 911 call is placed from one of these facilities, the public answering point that takes the call is often not able to find the exact location of the call, other than the main address of the MLTS. The FCC has had an eye on this issue for quite some time.

The traditional calling system for emergency 911 is a wireline configuration that the local exchange carrier can use to pinpoint the caller’s number and give the call to the appropriate PSAP. The PSAP uses that number to match what they have in the database, and the exact physical location tied to that number is pinpointed.

But, with the proliferation of mobile devices and VoIP technology, things aren’t that simple anymore. Without the wired model, new solutions are in order and now include E911 hosted solutions.

Showing promise in helping to resolve the location issue is the development of E911 hosted solutions. This is a new technology developed to get first responders to the people who desperately need them. E911 hosted solutions are becoming a priority for companies that have embarked on deploying VoIP and IP technologies in their headquarters.

With the number of operations that have taken on IP-based communications, which offer many benefits including a wide range of business-friendly perks like video conference calling, the need for E911 hosted solutions has never been greater. E911 hosted solutions make the switch to an IP network easier because companies are capable of constructing ERLs and assigning phone numbers to each of the ERLs.

Likewise, offices are constantly in transition, and phones get moved. But with E911 hosted solutions, there is no need to worry about entering a new MAC to update the 911 database – the hosted solution detects the phone’s move to another ERL and automatically makes the necessary changes to the database.

MLTS manufacturers are working through technical solutions to bring better and more effective 911 service to the people who use their systems. E911 hosted solutions will likely be a part of that solution.