GlobalTouch Telecom is fully compliant with current FCC regulations. This means that we have offered our customers, as a part of our VoIP ASP model, 911 coverage to 100% of their VoIP customers since February 1, 2006. Our 911 service provider has established Selective Router access, working with the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) to help establish a standard protocol for data transfer, reducing the costs involved by the creation of a geospatially enabled selective routing data base and working with regulators to better define what “compliance” is in the view of the FCC.
The 911 service’s Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) information is constructed based on actual service area boundary descriptions and maps, not from Master Street Address Guides (MSAGs). This means they cover areas that are not addressed, such as parks, rivers, lakes and other open spaces. In addition, there are 700+ counties in the U.S. that do not have 911 services at all. The service is able to augment maps with boundaries of Sheriff’s departments, thus creating a database that covers every square inch of the U.S.
The new VoIP 911 service does not use PSAP administrative lines, which are often answered by untrained personnel and are generally not covered 24 hours per day. The database is screened for 24 hour answering, voice recording, and trained emergency dispatch personnel.
All customers must fill in a “911 Address” when they first sign up for service; they also have access to a web-based SIPTalk control panel GUI where the 911 address info can be modified at any time.
When the data is validated by the 911 service, GlobalTouch receives a validation code, which allows us to know whether the customer has been satisfactorily geolocated and has input a correct address.
When any GlobalTouch customer dials 911 we transfer that call via SIP to the 911 service. Presumably an alternate TDM connection could be made to any of the redundant 911 Service Centers as backup to the SIP connection. The 911 service already knows if E911 service is available for that Automated Number Identification ANI or pANI. A pANI (pseudo Automatic Number Identification) is a 10-digit number used for the routing and retrieval of ALI for wireless and nomadic VoIP 9-1-1 calls.
If E911 is available for the caller, the service sends the call to the appropriate Selective Router, which sends it to the PSAP, which does an ALI lookup to get the address information while the call is being answered.
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