E911 (Enhanced 911) is a service that automatically displays the telephone number and physical location of the 911 caller on the emergency operator’s screen.
E911 also involves Selective Routing, whereby the 911 call is routed to the appropriate PSAP based on the caller’s physical location.
An E911 location is the dispatchable address where a 911 caller is located. It includes the caller’s civic address, but may also include details such as the floor, wing, room, or office of the caller to allow arriving first responders more quickly locate the source of the emergency.
With traditional phone service (PSTN), a telephone number is tied to the phone line’s physical location. For E911 purposes, this phone number is associated to the physical location in the local exchange carrier (LEC) regional Automatic Location Identification (ALI) database. Since the phone number is static, the phone number only needs to be associated to its physical location in the ALI database once. When 911 is dialed, the regional ALI database ensures the caller’s location information is displayed on the PSAP emergency operator’s screen, along with the caller’s telephone number.
THIS IS NOT THE SAME PROCESS FOR VOIP SERVICE
Unlike phones using PSTN service, VoIP phones and soft phones are nomadic and can work from anywhere with connectivity to the Internet or the company network. Thus, the traditional association of a phone number to a single physical location in a regional ALI database may be problematic. For example, a VoIP phone could move from Florida to New York and still keep its Florida telephone number.
This poses a problem for call routing as, based on the caller’s telephone number, the 911 call will go to the Florida PSAP rather than to the PSAP closest to the caller’s actual location in New York. It also means that the location associated with the VoIP number in the ALI database may not reflect the phone’s current whereabouts.
With traditional E911 service, ALI records are stored in regional ALI databases, and are usually administered by the local exchange carrier (LEC). When a phone’s location changes, the regional ALI database must be revised with new location information which can take up to 48 hours to update.
Due to the nomadic capabilities of IP phones, it can be difficult to ensure that the regional ALI is up-to-date. Whereas traditional telephone numbers are static, IP phones can be moved easily, forcing the user to notify a network administrator, who in turn must contact the LEC to update the phone’s location in the regional ALI database. Unfortunately, this process takes time to implement, and may be forgotten entirely by the user.
Additionally, IP phones can relocate to regions served by different ALI databases entirely. A VoIP service provider or enterprise would then need agreements with each LEC to update different regional ALI databases as phones move around the country. This would be cumbersome to manage and could be costly.
To ensure up-to-date ALI for VoIP users, regardless of location, we utilize Bandwidth which provides a single national ALI database (nALI) that maintains records from all 50 states and Canada. It includes real-time address validation and provisioning, ensuring that the location data associated to a VoIP phone is correct and can be properly interpreted by the local PSAPs. For enterprises with branch offices in different regions, the nALI eliminates the complexity of managing records in different regional ALI databases, simplifying administration and reducing costs.