[asterisk-users] E911 Recommendations?

[Alex Balashov]

Jay R. Ashworth wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 03:20:02PM -0400, Alex Balashov wrote:
>> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>>> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 02:05:18PM -0500, Doug wrote:
>>>> Anybody have recommendations for a reliable,
>>>> good valued, E911 provider?
>>> Wow.  E911 providers are *municipalities*, aren't they?  :-)
>> No, they're not.
>>
>> There are service companies specialising in the delivery of 911 calls to 
>> the correct PSAP along with maintaining and updating E.911 placement/ALI 
>> information.
> 
> Hmm.  I wasn't aware that either of those functions were permitted to
> be outsourced.  Clearly I have much to learn.

They cannot be outsourced entirely, in any kind of meaningful financial 
sense.  It is still necessary for the end VoIP provider to collect the 
necessary waivers from the user, to obtain accurate and up-to-date 
address information from the end-user, and to provide facilities to 
complete the E911 call.

The part that can be outsourced is the actual delivery of the call to 
the correct PSAP.  It doesn't make economic sense for a nationwide VoIP 
service provider[1] to obtain hard tandem trunks to the various PSAPs in 
various LATAs all throughout for a service that enjoys at best very 
incidental use and whose costs cannot be recouped.

So, what typically happens is that the VoIP service provider uses some 
sort of intra-industrial interface gateway, web service, API, etc. to 
build ALI information for every customer and transmit that to the E911 
carrier, which updates it in its own database and actually provides the 
PSAP connectivity.

In other words, there's still a lot of legwork to be done by the VoIP 
provider, so I don't know that "outsourced" is really the right term for it.

[1]  Assuming you think nationwide VoIP service makes sense as a 
business model ... heh heh.

-- 
Alex Balashov
Evariste Systems
Web    : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel    : (+1) (678) 954-0670
Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671
Mobile : (+1) (706) 338-8599