Thanks for the information and link. While this does take a bit wind out of my sails, it doesn’t take away from me wanting to figure this out. I think the ideas for 911 dialing and notification are great, but if you had not brought this to my attention, I would not have known. How many other rules are our there that I am not aware of.
I really only scanned the link information at this time, I’ll take a closer look later on tonight or tomorrow. The direct dialing isn’t a problem and I think I can setup a notification, but it still doesn’t relieve me to have that hanging over my head.
I was not asked directly to look into it at home, on my own time. We kicked around the idea of: “What would we do”. But, knowing how I felt when the system went down in the past, I feel like the knowledge I could have ready if this current system died off fast would be worth it. At least I can provide more information and/or help than I could a month or two ago.
I don’t remember all the details exactly, but they installed it, set it up and told us how to use it. They gave me their 800 number and said to call if we needed anything. We called a few times to find out how a feature worked (scheduling an exception to a day/night rule) and they happily told us how it works. The first time I called them when the system board died, I was looking for a replacement to purchase. No answer. No return call. I found one somewhere else and figured out how to replace it and restore our settings. Maybe I was asking too much from them for the service they provided, but I can say how I felt when the system was dead and not really knowing much about it other than configuration settings. I thought, and still kind of think, that knowing more about the system would be more beneficial to us.
I see we average 38 missed calls a month on our customer lines.Not bad. This is from a time when we are not as busy Of course, I don’t know how many are not even trying to call anymore if they received too many busy signals in the past.
That’s not bad. In our past, we had a carrier voicemail for those 38 calls, but if you go to FreePBX and SIP trunks, you’ll be able to just send them to Vmail on your system.
I wonder who is on the hook if the PBX is installed, set up and admin’d correctly with battery backup and the VoIP service was down at the time someone needed to call 911? I see that VoIP.ms has in their E911Terms and Conditions, in part:
…Due to the nature and instability of VoIP networks, we cannot and do not guarantee your emergency call will go through. …