FCC to examine problems with 911 calling in enterprise systems [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

FCC to examine problems with 911 calling in enterprise systems [pdf]

apps.fcc.gov

28 pointsnewman8r31 comments

Ah, this is the opposite direction of what I thought: often "dial 9 to reach an outside line" systems end up triggering accidental calls to 911, especially since the person making the mistake just hangs up, in which case 911 is required to send a responder out.

That's not what this is about at all, but rather that "systems may not support direct 911 dialing, route 911 calls to the nearest 911 call center, or transmit accurate information on the caller’s location or call-back number." That is indeed a much more important issue!

However the "dial 9" issue is still present. Esp. in an environment with "dial 1 for long distance" and a lot of long distance calling. I've always thought it would have been better to "dial 8" for an outside line. That way the first two numbers of a long distance call are not also the first two numbers of an emergency call (91).

Historically, often 9 was used for outside line, 8 was used for a tie-line call (intra-company). This originated in Step-by-Step PBX, where that 8 or 9 on the first selector would literally route you to a different signal path in the switch (to a connector that would hunt to an outgoing trunk). It carried over into early electronic PBXen, that were very limited in the size of their internal routing table, and the logic used to determine routing.

We have no excuse anymore not to be doing full translation dialing anymore - the technology is there and almost universal now.

Full translation means, you just dial the number and its the PBX figures out what you actually wanted - it just requires a little bit of planning - like, 3,4,5 or 7 digits for intra-company calls, 10 or 11 digits for external calls, no prefix or routing codes (like 9 or 8) - 911 can either be routed to an attendant/security or translated out directly.

I'm surprised corporate phones don't just have an "outside call" button built in, that transparently dials the magical incantation for you. No more mistakes - just lift, press the "I am going to make a phone call now" button, and then make the phone call.

Corps don't want to encourage (paid for) outside calls in many case?

This happens WAY too often at my workplace. Security has to check on it...happens once a week :/

This is good.

Side note: If you have _any_ responsibility for your office's phone system, do a 911 Test once a quarter.

http://karl.kornel.us/2014/10/the-911-test/ (Shameless Plug!)

At my previous company (which got bought by another company, and so no longer exists), we had a Cisco Unified Communication Manager (CUCM) 6.5 system. When I started, we had three voice T1s at HQ: Two were AT&T ISDN voice T1s, and had our 4000-DID block assigned to it. The second voice T1 was a Verizon CAS voice T1, and was used for outbound calls only.

We could make 911 calls out through either provider, and that was how it was set up: Prefer AT&T outbound; fall back to Verizon if the AT&T lines were full or down. In both cases, the local 911 dispatch would receive out street address when the call came through (I tested this).

Later on, as part of a move to AT&T Gigabit fiber, we replaced the two T1s with SIP. Among all of the other issues we had, the 911 center suddenly stopped getting our address information: The appropriate fields on their end were just blank.

Talking to AT&T, the impression I got was that it was our problem to deal with.

In the end, and with the merger looming, I switched our 911 config to the Verizon backup (which I insisted we keep), so that 911 dispatch would get our address.

So, again: Find out who at your $WORK is responsible for phones, and make sure they do a 911 test every quarter!

This is super important. In an emergency you don't necessarily have time to learn how to dial out.

For VOIP solutions that often come with the "don't call 911 it won't work" caveat. That isn't good enough. In fact, maybe the FCC should take the position that mishandling these calls by VoIP systems is equivalent to blocking/impeding them. E.g. its bad practice (and I think illegal) for a cell phone to be inoperable for emergency calls while locked.

On the cell phone note, you don't even need to pay for cell service. If your phone can connect to a cell tower you can dial 911.

They may not be able to dial you back if your call gets disconnected, on account of your phone not having a phone number. I'm not sure how that works.

Aren't VOIP systems already required to support 911? I know I pay a $1.50/month fee for 911 service on my home VOIP line.

Not all. Computer-based services like Skype often don't support calling 911, even though they can call other landlines. (They're pretty clear about this when you sign up for an account.)

I have an ObiHai box at home that lets me use Google Voice as a my landline VoIP provider for free. However, I still have to pay a second SIP provider about $15/year just for 911 access.

The requirement is that only interconnected two way calling requires this. Skype sells separate in and out products, so they aren't two-way. Yeah, I know.

Hum. 99% of users in a large company have a mobile phone. Feels a bit like a corner case problem.

That creates a different problem, which is also dangerous.

In a large company, you want physical security to know when there's an emergency. They can usually get to the scene much, much quicker, and will need to let emergency services into the building anyway.

With landline corporate phones, they can be configured so that if the user direct dials 911, they can flag the extension and flash an alarm in the security office. Hotels often have a similar setup. (Avaya calls it "On-Site Notification", Cisco calls it "Cisco Emergency Responder".)

If employees/guests are direct dialing 911 from a cell phone, building security has no idea what's going on.

This is exactly the case.

Further, the parent comment is ignoring certain companies and agencies that explicitly prohibit cell phones on site.

Some older PBXen trap 911 and send it to the attendant or another pre-designated extension.

That doesn't apply to any government contractor dealing with classified information. For example, many Lockheed Martin employees aren't allowed to bring a mobile phone past the security checkpoint.

If the building is on fire in an area with no cell service (like the basement) and the only phone is VoIP, it becomes an everyone problem pretty darn fast.

It's astounding to me how easily people shrug off 'corner case problems'. Some things need to work in every case, and many complex systems have to be designed to accommodate every 'corner'.

"How much cheaper would buses be if they didn't need to be wheel-chair accessible? Surely 99% of people don't have wheel-chairs."

"Our nuclear power plant is designed to withstand a 10M tsunami, nearly all of the earthquakes and tsunamis in the past hundred years have been smaller than that."

> "How much cheaper would buses be if they didn't need to be wheel-chair accessible? Surely 99% of people don't have wheel-chairs."

If buses would be so much cheaper that special wheel-chair accessible vans could be provided instead then maybe that's a case that should be shrugged-off.

Are you really surprised or are you just expressing outrage that other people make different tradeoffs than you do?

Even in the nuclear power plant case you mention it's not obvious that it would be better to design every nuclear power plant to withstand disasters that have not occurred in the past one hundred years especially if the alternative is, e.g. a coal-fired power plant.

I really am surprised how so many 'solutions' to 'obvious' problems are really just methods to ignore the difficult parts. It's pervasive, especially on Reddit/HN type forums and with charlatan politicians and their supporters.

If the solutions were easy, they would have been figured out by now. We live in a highly engineered world but people constantly ignore all nuance.

Another example I saw recently was this crazy outrage that Whole Foods was selling pre-peeled oranges in plastic containers. They were contacting corporate offices and trying to shame WF for their waste. Nobody stopped to think that maybe people have different levels of manual dexterity and that the elderly or disabled people might enjoy a fresh orange too.

Nearly all of the challenge in design lies in the corner case.

I'd highly recommend every software engineer to spend a little time in their career working on safety critical applications. Medical devices, avionics and automotive, anything related to emergency-911 services, etc. The attitude towards risk, tradeoffs, edge cases and defect prioritization is different than it is at your usual "build fast & break stuff" circus. It can be eye opening.

No, it should not be "shrugged off": it could be carefully considered and a better alternative provided, as you suggested.

"Shrugged off" implies that problems that don't apply to you personally are not important, and that attitude or even its apparent presence cause a huge chunk of the world's problems at root...

>If buses would be so much cheaper that special wheel-chair accessible vans could be provided instead then maybe that's a case that should be shrugged-off.

No, it shouldn't. This is the problem with just saying 'the market will fix it'. The market will fix it for rich white able-bodied men and basically nobody else.

My work phone is a VoIP device. Sits on my desk, looks exactly like a phone, has a handset with a curly cable, and can call real phone numbers. The fact that it's actually a VoIP phone has no bearing on my actual usage of it. Therefore, I expect that when I dial 911 (or at least 9-911) on it, it does the right thing.

That's OK. This is about emergency services, and emergencies are, by definition, corner cases.

Their are companies out there that answer 911 calls originating form VOIP systems. I work for one that handles provides those services to nearly a 1 million VOIP users. We handle a LOT of V911 calls everyday.

Also, with the growing popularity of providing Wifi telephony, their are bigger 911 issues in the offing.

"systems may not support direct 911 dialing, route 911 calls to the nearest 911 call center, or transmit accurate information on the caller’s location or call-back number." Points #2 and 3 are what's critical here.

I'm aware, I don't want to use the comments as advertising, but these problems have been addressed in a specialized manner with the services we provide. Not that they can't be wrong (location) but protocols are in place for dealing with those that are/maybe.

Does it need to be fixed? Yes! but its wrong to assume that V911 is broken at a wholesale level. The same issues face E911 as well. The entire location system (Long/Lat) does not work well when altitude is brought into play. Their are standards in place for VOIP systems to transmit their exact NETWORK location, but it rarely implemented.

Its often up to the customer to make sure their service address is accurately rendered with the carrier, so it can be fed to intrado or whatever to ensure that 911 and e911 works accurately.

Bout damn time

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