Having configured FreePBX on various systems over the past years, I still have little experience setting up E911.
Past systems had a “landline” connected that we “sent” our 911 calls out through. (Never had the need to dial 911 but, that is the way it was setup.)
My memory could be wrong so, I think I remember there being a dial pattern for “911” within the dial pattern listings for the outbound route. On my current system, until now, there has not been a 911 dial pattern. Now my provider offers a “911 test number” (922 in my case) to call, I had to add that number to my dial patterns to allow the test. Dialing this test number now reports the correct DID number associated for 911 emergency services location information.
So, this may seem like a really dumb question but, I now need to add “911” to my dial patterns for the associated “Emergency outbound route” or is this something that is part of some default dial pattern anywhere else within FreePBX? (All the legal requirements for E911 and the use of 911 for testing make me VERY uncomfortable, hence the question.)
Robert, I don’t have a ton of experience, but this is what I did…First, I followed the wiki https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FPG/Outbound+Routes+Configuration+Examples and set up an outbound route for emergency numbers (including the test number).
next, I found the business number for my county emergency response center and asked them if I could perform a test. I have found that as long as you call ahead and get permission, they are happy to help and it is a good idea to test!
In the US, you can also add ‘811’ (for digging projects), 511 (for road conditions), 411 (For information if you have an external source). The rest of the ‘N11’ numbers will eventually represent something, so maybe just block them all out for good measure.
Okay, so maybe this is not solved just yet . . . should it be a “[N]11” dial pattern to cover all (411, 511, 811, 911) or one additional dial pattern for each 411, 511, 611, 811, 911?
I am not in the US (I am Canadian) but most of those things are the same or similar here but take what I will say with a grain of salt since there are sometimes some subtle differences…
Do you consider all of these numbers to be emergency numbers and do you want to enforce, for all of them, the same CID and the use of the same trunk?
(Which you normally have to do since you don’t usually pay for that service from all of the providers you use…)
I have multiple trunks for things such as T.38 faxing, better outbound international rates, etc… even on my home test server (which I recently used as a guinea pig for the FreePBX 13 to 14 upgrade…)
For 411 I don’t believe all my VoIP providers offer it and 311 (3-1-1 - Wikipedia) isn’t provided by my town…
If I want 411 I have to forward it to a specific trunk and 311 I did my own using the information provided by my town (ie a phone number that varies depending on the hour of the day).
It’s up to you to decide how you want to handle this, personally I would make separate routes and name them accordingly…
Even on my home test server I think I have like 8 to 10 different outbound routes, all of them handling something specific, and some of them using more than one trunk (when that is possible).