Enterprise Telephony Saves Lives
Most children in the US and Canada are taught to dial 911 in the event of an emergency requiring police, fire, or EMS services. I witnessed the importance of 911 at quite a young age, when my elderly family fell and required EMS. As I got older, I have lost count of how many times I've called 911, whether it was to remove people from my apartment, conduct a wellness check on people walking on the freeway, or witnessing a car accident. The 911 ecosystem plays a large role in public safety, and not just as a member of society, but also a voice engineer, I have the greatest gratitude for the men and women who work our Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs). Carrier-side engineers who implement 911 preemption, triagulation, E911 address databases, and more, are also a big part of that ecosystem. However, if you ever had to call 911 from a phone at work, a hotel, a conference center, or just about any business location, your IT team plays a large role in getting your call to your local PSAP, with full location services.
Kari and the Law in her Name
Kari Hunt is the person I'll focus on in this post. As her father, Hank Hunt, says, was full of life. She was the mother of three children. She left her husband in 2013 due to emotional and verbal abuse. Shortly after the departure, her estranged husband got a hotel room in Marshall, Texas, and unfortunately, during a visit by Kari and her kids, her husband attacked Kari. As instructed to by both Kari and the education system, nine-year-old Brianna, daughter of Kari, went to call 911 on the hotel phone, but the call did not connect. Why did that call not connect, you may ask?
Dial string.
A dial string. Specifically, a 9 prefix to dial outbound, so the full dial string would be "9911" on that hotel phone system.
Kari lost her life that day. The resource we have that could've saved her life was blocked by the very thing us voice engineers work on every day.
Congress would later pass Kari's Law, in honor of Kari Hunt, in 2018, mandating that Multi-Line Telephone System (MLTS) operators maintain "911" as a valid dial string to reach 911 services. The law also mandates that MLTS operators notify on-site security desks of the call for first-responder coordination purposes.
The RAY BAUM's Act of 2018, Section 506
Ray Baum served on US Representitive Greg Walden's staff starting in 2016, to work with the FCC on telecommunications issues. Baum would eventually pass away in 2018 due to prostate cancer. Walden would eventually arrange to have the RAY BAUM's Act named in his honor for his work, and Congress would pass that legislation. In the legislation, Section 506 would enhance Kari's law by mandating that all telephony systems, including MLTSes, convey the caller's location automatically to the PSAP.
Complying is Difficult
These laws are notoriously difficult to comply with. Many Cisco Unified Call Manager admins can tell you about the implementation hell that is Cisco Emergency Responder. Admins who leverage Emergency Line Identification Number (ELIN) deployments aren't maintaining ELIN pools for fun. Admins who leverage an Emergency Responder Service (ERS) instead of an ELIN pool don't like seeing ERS in their budget.
Work-from-home, and in general, nomadic workforces, have made this more difficult. Dynamic location discovery is a pain (I'm looking at you Microsoft, I am begging for LLDP-MED support for emergency calling use), and carrier support for standard location payloads like Presence Information Data Format Location Object (PIDF-LO) is thin. Deploying ERS clients for phone systems that don't support PIDF-LO and supporting that client is a headache. Doing all of this, and passing assessments like SOC, is much more difficult.
However, this isn't a post on how to comply.
Why We Comply Anyways
Enterprise voice engineers, in the eyes of the law, operate MLTSes. The hotel's MLTS was the core issue in the Kari Hunt case. Although it is difficult to comply, here's why we do it:
A compliant system could make the difference on whether someone using our phone to call 911 lives or dies.
In a perfect world, we wouldn't need to comply. None of us want to work for hours to convince decision makers to put aside funds to comply. We do it anyways, knowing Kari Hunt died without these laws in place.
For IT leadership second-guessing compliance for "cost savings and simplicity" reasons, comply anyways. Your employees, contractors, and customers deserve your compliance for their lives.
For my fellow voice engineers, know that your E911 work could very well save lives. I know firsthand how difficult it is, both technically and politically, to get it done. Do it anyways.