Recently I had a chance to chat with Alan Fuks of 911 Enable about the state of E911 in the enterprise. (911 Enable, along with RedSky, will be taking part in a breakout session on E911 at VoiceCon San Francisco.)The topic of E911 has proved to be of enduring interest at VoiceCon, even as it's moved a little bit out of the spotlight in the communications industry as a whole. I suspect that one reason why attendees continue to care about E911--apart from the obvious importance of the subject--is that it's constantly changing and evolving in ways that are non-uniform across the country.
For example, Alan Fuks noted that last July, Massachusetts revised its rules governing enterprise implementations of E911 (Massachusetts is one of 16 states that has passed legislation with specific rules about E911 implementation.) The major change that Massachusetts made was to break enterprises down into three categories: Private & government; hotels/motels; and higher education. Private enterprise and government have to provide the local public service answering point (PSAP), which is the E911 response center, with the floor level of the building from which the 911 call is made. Also, if the floor is more than 25,000 square feet, the location information must be broken down to another level of granularity. Hotels and motels, and education must each provide specific room numbers from which 911 calls are made.
Alan notes that, at least among states that pass E911 regulation, the trend is to do what Massachusetts did and continue to refine the regs to make them more granular, which of course means making them more demanding for enterprises to comply with. So the message is that your work is never done.
I also asked Alan about the hot topic in communications services these days, SIP trunking, and what an enterprise has to do to make sure support for E911 transitions as you make the move to SIP trunks. Basically, the carrier has to be able to support E911 in its SIP trunk offering, so it's another requirement you have to put on your list when you go shopping for SIP Trunks.
Finally, I asked Alan what enterprises should do if they have multiple locations: Do you standardize your E911 capabilities to the most stringent state requirements that any of your sites is subject to? If you don't do this, are you risking civil liability if you do less at a location where there are less demanding or no E911 requirements--the idea being that you were aware of more effective solutions because you implemented them in other locations where the law did require them?
Alan responded that customers naturally want to provide the highest level of E911 functionality everywhere, but that the reality is that these decisions--especially in the current down economy--all come down to cost.
So the bottom line is that you can't ever rest on your laurels--or your current systems--when it comes to E911.
