e911 and VoIP

[creise]

Hi all,

My situation is this:

• S8500C running Communication Manager 4 in City1
• Small branch office (under 15 users) in City2 with only IP phones, no gateways of any kind connected via MPLS to City1. There are plans for a couple more small office like this on the drawing board.
• If a City2 employee dials 911 they get the City1 operator (as you would expect, as the documentation describes, and obviously not our desired state - the IP phones went in without a lot of planning because of a particular unexpected event)

I understand that I can put a gateway device in City2 just to handle 911. However, from the reading I’ve done on the Avaya website, going through the Emergency Dialing manual and the Avaya IP Telephony Implementation Guide among others, it seems like I should have other options besides adding hardware into those sites, maybe:

• a simple configuration in Communication Manager so that a 911 call from IP network region 4 dials a speeddial for City2 Police
• running a foreign exchange line from City2 to City1 and directing 911 calls for network region 4 out that
• registering the numbers used by the City2 employees with (someone) so the correct PSAP gets dialed. All these things are hinted at in the documentation but I haven't been able to pull the threads to figure out how to pursue them.

I’m astounded that the only solution from my integrators seems to be to add more hardware, especially when my limited understanding of the system seems to be pointing to the possibilities of alternatives.

It is really possible that large retail chains and places with dozens or hundreds of branch offices with IP phones all put gateway devices in every branch, or is there some way I should be asking the question to help my local integrator think through alternatives? I might end up with half-a-dozen small branches, tops. With the relatively small size and skill set of our support staff (and maintenance budget), if it's really that involved we might keep those branch offices off the company PBX and get phone/voicemail services from the local telco.

If you have any suggestions for how I can get better educated about the options, or get a feel for how other people handle this I sure would appreciate any help. I feel like I've exhausted my ability to absorb information from the Avaya manuals and the only experience my integrator has with this is adding gateway hardware. If the only viable solution is to put gateway hardware in each branch, that would be helpful to understand as well.

Thanks!

[chen3]

Hi Buddy,

Per my understanding, a media-gateway should be populated in each Branch site.
Because the scenario now is all the IP phones in Branch office are connecting and managed by CM in city 1 directly. The emergency calls will be route to local PSAP in city 1 because all the calls are going out through the local trunk in Main site.
A media gateway with local PSTN trunk in Branch office will be a simple solution. All the emergency calls will be going out through local trunk via media gateway in city 2 or 3....

And I suggest that maybe you can open an Advisory case to US support team for further consultant due to specific situation in US.

Hopefully this will help you....

Regards,
Nixon

[fletcherm]

Creise-

You ask some good questions. Let me try to address them for you.

• a simple configuration in Communication Manager so that a 911 call from IP network region 4 dials a speeddial for City2 Police

Although this is possible, it is a bad idea. This would put a call dialed as 9-1-1over to the administrative lines of the foreign police station. Calls that come in on the admin lines and not the specialized 911 trunks to the PSAP may not be handled correctly, and there would be no screen pop display to the dispatcher showing the caller address information.

• running a foreign exchange line from City2 to City1 and directing 911 calls for network region 4 out that

This option will certainly work, but I think that you will find the expense diff=icult to justify.

• registering the numbers used by the City2 employees with (someone) so the correct PSAP gets dialed. All these things are hinted at in the documentation but I haven't been able to pull the threads to figure out how to pursue them.

You are sort of on the right track here. This is commonly known as a VPC or VoIP Positioning Center. The VPC's have connectivity to PSAP's across the US and can provide you with connectivity for your remote workers. I will not dive into how this is done here to save space, but it does work, it is more affordable than FX trunks and will provide you with what you need for just about anyplace in the continental US.

The problem is that the 9-1-1 Selective Router infrastructure in the carrier networks is very geographically specific. Service NEVER crosses a state line, and there are several 9-1-1 services areas in each state (typically). There are states with a single area like, NJ and RI, but there are other states with many like Texas with 18 I think. This makes the local trunking issue extremely difficult to manage and very expensive.

I should point out that Next Generation 9-1-1 is right around the corner where your carrier will be able to provide nationwide 9-1-1 service via SIP trunks. At Avaya, we are building the technology on the PBX side to generate the NG911 SIP headers, the Emergency Service Routing Proxy (ESRP) at the carrier level to route the NG 911 calls, and the NG 911 PSAP gear to answer the inbound.

You may want to consider some professional services from Avaya or a consultant to do a risk analysis, 9-1-1 evaluation and remediation plan recommendation for you. It's money well spent when you consider the cost of doing it wrong could be someones life.

Feel free to reach out to me directly if you want to chat further. There are some great videos I did back at Nortel that are on YouTube that explain how E9-1-1 works. They are very generic, and apply to Avaya as well, although I have not had the chance to re-brand them yet. Just search on Nortel E911 and you should find them on YouTube.

Fletch
E-1-1 Product Manager
[email protected]

[jfpoland]

We had our telco setup ELINS for this problem. (ELINs that were created by the telco were 10 digit phone numbers for us)

For each site that we have we had a seperate ELIN created which would identify each site such as number, address, correct PSAPI in the telco's database. They then update the PSAPI with our ELIN information.

Created the ELIN as a dummy extension number.

We would assign IP phones from City 1 to a specific ELIN via IP-Network-Mapping and if there were digital/analog sets we would use on the station form and add the specific ELIN to Emergency Location Ext: on page 2.

From here we would outpulse the ELIN to our telco by changing public-unknown-numbering for that ELIN dummy extension to outpulse the actual ELIN number that our telco supplied us for that site.

Almost forgot. You will also need to set the Call Type of the ars form for 911 to emer
Protocol Version b was required for our PRI's as well



So now we can use one trunk group and have our telco send each locations 911 calls to the correct PSAP.

In testing when a user dials 911 do a list trace on that station and you could verify that you are outpulsing the correct ELIN number to your telco company.

I hope this helps.

[audet4]

Well that fine on Outbound with ELIN for each location or floors and implementing ELE thru the Network Map.
I got that part working on SIP trunk thru ASBCE


but what about the Inbound call back for the 911 PSAP ? where the wall will go?
According to Avaya doc if the SYS PAR Feature is set Emergency Extension Forwarding (min): 10, then After a 911 call the PBX is supposed to route any inbound call to that ELIN to the 911 Caller for 10 Min.
I did not found yet on how to get that done.
Anyone have a clue on how to setup Emergency Call back feature.?