VoIP Causes An Enterprise 911 Emergency

The PBX is often a barrier to Enhanced 911 services, preventing paramedics and firefighters from locating callers who need help. With new laws mandating an upgrade, are VoIP and wireless the solution or part of the problem?
Information Week
December 1st, 2005

If you need to call 911 from the office, try to make sure your office is in Florida, not Colorado. That's because Florida is one of five states that require enterprise PBXs to provide emergency services with the exact location of callers, whereas Colorado is one of three with laws on the books saying they don't need to provide any location data at all. In most other states, emergency services may be able to determine only the postal address of the building containing the PBX, not the actual phone from which a 911 call was made.

That will change in 2006, when the FCC is likely to introduce regulations mandating that PBXs provide detailed location information compatible with Enhanced 911 (E-911), the technology that automatically tells 911 dispatchers where callers are. In December last year, it issued a notice of proposed rule making that gave states one year to introduce their own legislation. Some have (see "State Enterprise E-911 Laws" below, left), but the majority haven't, so the FCC is set to act and introduce national rules.

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