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Wendy Herman, Nortel
April 2008

Alone, working late, in a New York City office tower, an employee feels faint and calls 911. Before she can give her location to the emergency call center operator, she passes out. Based on her caller ID address information, an ambulance is dispatched but the multi-storey building doesn't have front desk security so responders have no way of finding out where the woman's office is located.

What went wrong? The call for help was made from an enterprise network's VoIP phone. And like many businesses, government or educational institutions around the world today, exact location-specific information to ensure emergency responders can find anyone within a building, or campus of buildings, hadn't yet been programmed into the new telephony network.

The issues for first responders is made even more complex by the fact VoIP phones are portable, allowing mobile workers to use the same office phone number wherever they plug their laptop into an Internet connection. While a call for help could go into the New York dispatch center based on the office's address within that city, the worker could actually be calling from a hotel room in Paris or an airport in New Delhi.

Last month, the U.S. Senate  passed a bill * requiring all current and future providers of VoIP services to offer enhanced or emergency 911 – often called E911 – to subscribers. In the UK, Internet telephony providers have until  September 2008 * to comply with regulations for phone connections to that country's emergency 999 and 112 which is the European Union's universal number.

As the use of  VoIP  increases in today's  unified communications  world, replacing traditional wireline phone services, countries everywhere have been addressing the emergency response issue across carrier providers of Internet-based telephony for several years. But similar government regulations for emergency numbers from enterprise networks haven't been keeping pace. It's estimated that E911 compliance has reached approximately 92 percent at the carrier level in the U.S. yet only 14 states have legislated some level of compliance for enterprise, according to the U.S. National Emergency Number Association (NENA).

"Today, whenever emergency responders fail to locate the caller who needs help, it's usually the enterprise network that causes the problems," says Mark Fletcher, chairman of the multi-line telephone system subcommittee for NENA. He's also product manager for emergency services at Nortel.

"The enterprise VoIP emergency response issue is often a result of low priority on IT 'to do' lists because just how serious a threat this is to the safety of employees isn't really appreciated until something goes wrong," says Fletcher. For example,  a Maryland man * called for medical help for chest pains from his office in a multi-building complex. Because his caller ID showed only one address, responders went to the wrong building. Finding nothing wrong, they left and the man was found dead hours later.

"The technical capability to program location-specific information into each employee phone already exists now in most enterprise equipment deployed over the past few years. Yet, IT departments may avoid implementing it because the logistics can seem overwhelming.  Regardless of whether there are 100 or 30,000 phones, it's a lot of information that needs programming. Once they understand the basic approach though, they find it is easy to implement and maintain."

Recognized as an industry visionary on E911, Fletcher has been on a public education mission about enterprise VoIP safety concerns for several years. He sees awareness of location-specific information for emergency response finally increasing as enterprise VoIP becomes more widely used. But while on-site identification of computer-based phones is a good start, it only solves part of the problem. The off-site mobility of IP-based employee phones is causing a new level of complexity for first responders unlike anything the industry has had to confront in the past.

"Even after the location of every phone has been programmed into the central server by building, by floor and specific area on each floor, that location for emergency response becomes useless as soon as employees walk out the door with their laptops," Fletcher says. "Wherever a user plugs that laptop into the Internet outside the office, and dials a country's emergency number, the dispatchers will only get the caller-ID information for that phone's location back at the employee's desk. If users can't stay on the line long enough to say exactly where they are – as happened with the man in Maryland – emergency response fails."

The VoIP number mobility issue for enterprise is currently being addressed through the development of next-generation location-specific software upgrades that should be ready for market in the next year, Fletcher says. It involves putting new levels of intelligence into the network to provide computer-based phone software with real-time, location ID tags wherever the phone accesses the Internet.

Already, enterprise software is available that allows off-site, caller ID location to be manually typed into a web page. Whenever an employee accesses the enterprise network from the Internet, the web page pops up requesting address and location information.

A more advanced approach being developed, involves software for router switches that automatically issues exact location information. Fletcher says, "Anywhere I power up my computer and access an IP address, the enterprise network will immediately update my phone software by sending it an ID location token. Say I'm in a big international airport. I hook into its WiFi network and the token automatically goes into my VoIP phone. If I make an emergency call, it shows I'm located at gate 50 within the departures terminal. The token principle works the same on every enterprise network like in a hotel, a coffee shop or on a trade show floor."

All equipment vendors are well aware of the current gaps in VoIP emergency number location across enterprise, wireline and wireless networks, Fletcher says, and are working to address them quickly. Part of the problem has been establishing common, worldwide technology standards. He expects those will be ratified over the next year to help speed up the process of plugging all holes in the few parts of the communications pipeline – like enterprise – that still exist. North America leads the world in being pro-active about the standards for the technology pieces needed, he says, and is being used as a model by other countries worldwide.

Nortel is currently developing next-generation emergency number capabilities across all of its enterprise call server portfolios globally, Fletcher says, as well as its contact center and carrier products. The company also has dedicated resources on R&D teams with designers or engineers sitting on public committees and standards groups.

"Nortel's vision and strategy is in line with what's being developed across the industry and we are members of standards and technical committees that are helping to shape its direction," Fletcher says. "But this isn't just about any one vendor. Whenever I'm invited to speak at events through my NENA subcommittee role – and whenever I'm talking with our customers – I emphasize why emergency number access in enterprise networks has such serious implications for the safety of all employees. I tell everyone it doesn't matter which vendor you choose to help you correct the issue. It just needs to be at the top of everyone's agenda – now."