911 May Cost You Far More Than a Phone Call911 May Cost You Far More Than a Phone Call

This entry was written by Mark J. Fletcher, Product Manager, E911 Emergency Services for Nortel, and was edited by Gary Audin. What if 9-1-1 does not work? What if the location is incorrect? Suppose you implement 9-1-1 and E911 in one office because the law says so but not in another office because there are no E911 regulations? Does an enterprise create more liabilities with uneven 9-1-1 and E911 deployment?

This entry was written by Mark J. Fletcher, Product Manager, E911 Emergency Services for Nortel, and was edited by Gary Audin.

What if 9-1-1 does not work? What if the location is incorrect? Suppose you implement 9-1-1 and E911 in one office because the law says so but not in another office because there are no E911 regulations? Does an enterprise create more liabilities with uneven 9-1-1 and E911 deployment?With the seemingly constant budget crunch that enterprise IT departments are in; some vendors are reluctant to include expensive 9-1-1 specific enhancements in initial bid proposals to minimize the bottom line. Those that do are often challenged with justifying the costs and components just to deal with the 9-1-1 issue. Additionally, many administrators feel 9-1-1 is a VoIP problem, and they might have only a small VoIP deployment, or one that is "planned for later," so they can deal with it then.

The fact of the matter is that 9-1-1 is an issue for all enterprise businesses, and TDM phones are just as susceptible as the latest VoIP solution to improper 9-1-1 call handling.

E911 call routing relies on Caller ID sent with the call to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). The received caller ID is matched against a database that returns information about your location to the 9-1-1 call taker. Send the wrong caller ID, and you get the wrong PSAP, or the call taker gets the wrong address. It's that simple. VoIP compounds this problem since the telephone itself is extremely portable. Users can move their locations, while retaining their phone number. So this technology can lead to a terrible tragedy if the 9-1-1 environment is not properly managed. This Washington Post article, from April 26, 2006, makes the point, "Man Found Dead in Office 10 Hours After 911 Phone Glitch Confuses Rescuers" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/20/AR2006042001923.html)

This brings me to the question "What is the REAL cost to the enterprise for 9-1-1?"

If you have gotten a quote for 9-1-1 on your communications system, you may have gotten a cost of as low as a few thousand dollars, to tens of thousands of dollars. Let's look at the latest VoiceCon RFP E911 specific responses. For vendor fairness, I'll flatten the E911 responses from the "Big 3" and use an average cost of $18 per person for a 1,500 employee installation. Some solutions were much more, and others were much less, but you can do your own research there. Based on this you can make the statement, "An E911 solution from vendor XYZ would cost $27,000, and I am not sure I can afford that".

This is mathematically correct, but did you take into consideration that this investment may not even equal the legal retainer for a wrongful death lawsuit arising from an improper E911 deployment? Did you consider you may be in violation of OSHA for not maintaining a safe workplace? There have even been some who have argued that failing to disclose the 9-1-1 environment could be construed as a Sarbanes Oxley violation for not disclosing that fact to your employees.

Another response I would expect to hear is that "Only 14 states currently have legislation, and we are not one of them." or worse, "We only bought it for our Chicago office due to the laws, and not for the South Carolina office since there was no law there." These may end up being decisions that are scrutinized by 12 people with no telecom experience sitting in front of you and your company on a jury; Not to mention what the local press is going publish about you and your company.

PBX 911-specific laws, in the 14 states that do have them, are there to define requirements for E911 compliance, as well as assign penalties for non-compliance with the law. They have nothing to do with your company's liability and duty to maintain a safe work environment. The lack of a law is a weak argument to fall back on when you're in court. And the best practice would be to deploy 9-1-1 at a consistent level enterprise wide based on the strictest E911 laws. After all you have proven that you were able to deploy a better technology in some locations of your business, therefore you should be able to deploy the same solution in all parts of your business.

In the end, the enterprise's IT and legal departments need to closely examine the E911 strategy when drafting an RFP or reviewing the enterprise's communications infrastructure. What would you award in damages, for 9-1-1 and E911 failure, if you were on a jury? That's the REAL cost and liability for E911 to the enterprise.