E911 - Forward Location By Extension

Hello,

We have a new customer that operates a school. From my research so far, it sounds like we need to have emergency response locations at the Room level.

Is there any way to forward/specify a room number given a specific extension?
E.g. ext. 1201 calls 911 (with same DID as other extensions), it shows room number B201.
ext. 2302 calls 911 (same DID as above), it shows room C302.

Some of what I’ve found online implies 1 (more more??) DIDs are needed per room phone which would normally just be an extension. Can anyone confirm this or if it’s at all possible to dynamically set the room number for E911 when the call goes out to 911?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/comments on this, really hoping to avoid purchasing 450 DIDs…

With most SIP providers you will have to buy a DID and e911 for that DId for every classroom. Our Clearly IP SIP trunking has a great solution for this that allows you to be 911 compliant for a fraction of what it would traditionally cost and we have full integration into FreePBX with a module to allow for easier management of this at a per extension level and all the required notifications for when someone calls 911. https://www.clearlyip.com/products/sip-trunking/ and a nice blog here about things. https://www.clearlyip.com/2020/01/13/karis-law-ray-baum-act-your-responsibilities-and-clearlyip-support-for-freepbx-and-other-business-phone-systems/

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Chris Sherwood with Crosstalk Solutions did a great video on this along with showcasing our product. https://youtube.com/watch?v=3BtYPl38Avk

My understanding is that if there is only one point of ingress (most schools in the US are that) you can have just one e911 DID provided that the designated DID is manned all the time (likely you have that too) and prepared to respond appropriately. Pre-emptively sending a notice to the right folks whenever 911 is called is also a good idea, that way the answering person would already have the classroom/location that called to hand.

Not sure where you get that from Ray Baums act. The act clearly states on the FCC website

“ Under Section 506 of RAY BAUM’S Act, the Commission has adopted rules to ensure that “dispatchable location” is conveyed with 911 calls to dispatch centers, regardless of the technological platform used, including 911 calls from MLTS. Dispatchable location means a location delivered to the PSAP with a 911 call that consists of the validated street address of the calling party, plus additional information such as suite, apartment, or similar information necessary to adequately identify the location of the calling party. (47 CFR § 9.3.)”.

And in more details here.

“ location information may be coordinate-based, and it must be sufficient to identify the caller’s civic address and approximate in-building location, including floor level, in large buildings. (47 CFR §§ 9.16(b)(3)(ii) and 9.3.)”

As we like to tell our customers which door within the building to kick down.

My understanding is that if a school has only one point of ingress, that could reasonably qualify as the ‘dispatchable location’ the e911 carrier will add street address and geolocation as appropriate (following customer directions.)

No, a single point of egress does not nullify this requirement. It is the size of the building(s) involved. Schools, hotels, medical and campuses are expressly outline as examples of who needs this.

There are some things to take in to consideration with this:

  1. 23 states already had laws like this. So for them it’s business as usual.
  2. Kari’s Law is fully active now. Meaning the deadline of Jan 6th 2021 is firm for existing systems.
  3. Ray Bay’s Section 506 is still not in place yet. There has been no official Federal Registry notice and as of right now the Office of Management and Budgets is still reviewing it. Once that is complete the notice will be released with the dates and deadlines. It will mostly like just be like Kari’s Law in new systems after X date will be required and existing systems will have roughly 1 year (fixed) and 2 years (non-fixed) deadlines.

Yeah, went down the whole hiring lawyers for answers on this road.

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Yeah, this seems to be our resulting understanding as well. Thanks for the detailed response.

Tom you are mostly correct except Ray Baum has been enacted and dates for enforcement published except the following sub sections which were granted more time before they are published to the Registery. It is not fair to say all of section 506 hasn’t been published yet.

Compliance will not be required for §§ 9.8(a); 9.10(q)(10)(v); 9.11(b)(2)(ii); 9.11(b)(2)(iv); 9.11(b)(4); 9.11(b)(5)(ii); (iii); 9.14(d)(2)(ii); (iii); 9.14(d)(2)(v); 9.14(d)(4); 9.14(e)(2)(ii); 9.14(e)(2)(iv); 9.14(e)(4); and 9.16(b)(3)(i), (ii), and (iii) until the Commission publishes a document in the Federal Register announcing the compliance date.

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