Tag: E911

July 4th | 9‑1‑1 | Fireworks – A Perilous Combo?

Back in 1980, when I was a police dispatcher in Sparta New Jersey, I can remember that inevitably every year on July 4th at about 8:00 PM, nearly every line on the phone would light up. For the most part, the conversation would go something like this:

Me:      “Sparta Police, dispatch”
Caller:  “Uhhm . . . yeah . . .  Can you tell me what time the fireworks start?”
Me:      “Same as last year sir, at dusk, usually right around 9:00PM”
Caller:  “OK . . . Thanks”

Not every call asked this, there were some interspersed inquiries:

Me:      “Sparta Police, dispatch”
Caller:  “Uhhm . . . yeah . . .  Can you tell me where I can WATCH the fireworks?”
Me:      “Probably in the sky . . . ”
[OK, so maybe my snarky attitude wanted to say this, but of course I remained professional]

The SAME call scenario then repeated for nearly the next hour, over and over and over. Much of the time, every available line would be lit, and every caller had the same question. In a way, it was almost comical.  The residents of these 3 tiny municipalities, a total population of 30,000, were under my care, but I was unable to help them in an emergency as I was tied up answering these calls. There I sat, all by myself, hoping and praying that no one was experiencing a REAL emergency and needed a real response for help. In an effort to break up the monotony, at times, I answered the phone with:

Me:      “Sparta Police, dispatch . . . the fireworks start at dusk”z
There was usually a long silence and they would respond, slightly confused
Caller:  “Uhhm . . . Thank you?”

Eventually, just as this rash of calls started to diminish, the next wave started to come in:

Me:      “Sparta Police, dispatch”
Caller:  “OK, hi . . . so . . .  there are a bunch of kids with fireworks over on East Shore Trail”
Me:      “Ok, can you tell me what any of them are wearing or which way they are heading?”
Caller:  “Nope, but they are raising hell over here and I am trying to sleep”

But that was 40 years ago, and times were very different. The communications technology was in its infancy, and everything was written down on punch cards, and time-stamped on a time clock (ka-chunk, ka-chunk). There was no 9‑1‑1 in my center, just POTS lines on a 1A2 Key system. Heck, while 9-1-1 may have existed somewhere in NJ back then, I didn’t know of anyone in the State that had it; and as for caller ID? Yeah, right! Ha ha ha! That was still a far-off fantasy. Back then, we worked under the bare minimums. Today, with four decades of techno-babble under my belt, quite a bit of self-taught programming in BASIC, QuickBasic+ and a little bit of C+, my favorite new word has become ‘workflow’ or scripting. At the core, a program is based on a flow chart. A list of actions and decisions that happen in a logical predefined order to create some effect or outflow of data. I quickly realized that when workflow was applied to nearly any problem, the resulting solution was often both effective and innovative. I may have automated a monotonous task.

The number of times I typed:
NCICQV.NJ0191800.LIC/768KUL.LIS/NJ
to do an NCIC check, has to number in the tens of thousands. . . .

or it may have just provided consistency in the data entry. In fact, some of the most innovative ideas are simply a combination of tasks strung together to solve a problem.

This is where AI can directly lend itself to enhance any industry – through automation. There should be no great surprise, as industry has realized this back when Ford implemented the Assembly line. But, before I get too deep into this particular topic, I want to make one thing perfectly clear to my readers, while artificial intelligence can greatly assist in making decisions, we are not talking about totally autonomous AI. Realistically, we are likely still a long way off from true artificial intelligence. This is because common sense is not always a binary decision. But, one thing that we can benefit from today is the mathematic probability and the assistive advice that AI can provide. This is where we need to start to change our thinking, especially in areas of public safety or critical life affecting decisions, such as the medical field.

I’m liking this to the change in thinking that has taken place with testing in schools. When I was growing up, calculators still we’re still uncommon. Bringing one into a test would be considered ‘cheating’. Now, along with the text books that are required for a particular class, advanced engineering courses require a scientific calculator, and often suggest several models. Keeping this frame of thought in mind, let’s revisit the first example I mentioned previously in this blog, but this time, I’ll apply some assistive AI logic, and present this solution in the form of a simple flowchart:

EXMPLE JULY 4th CALL SCREENING WORKFLOW

The simplified logic here is fairly easy to understand. When a call arrives, the following decision points are considered.

• . Do I have a Call Taker Available?
• . If I do, then deliver the call. If I don’t, then determine if:
• . Is it July 4th between 20:00 and 21:00?
• . If not, que to the call takers, but if it is, intercept and play an informational message about where the fireworks are, and even direct them to the web for more information and safety tips.

Ideally this could eliminate many of the calls from tying up call takers, but those that need to speak to them are placed in queue, or routed elsewhere

This is done easily as once we play the message, we ask if they need further assistance, and disconnect, queue as needed, or even branch further to other common information resources.

Plan 9 from Outer Space?

Now, here is where we can really get a little far out with a solution.

By prompting the caller with an IVR, we can ask them if they’re calling from a mobile device?
(remember, in many markets this is a 80% – 90% of the call volume)

If the caller is on a text enabled device, we can clear them off the 9-1-1 line while offering them a more informative and interactive experience by simply pushing a web link to their device. Once the citizen clicks on the link, very simple HTML 5 technology can be embedded in the webpage that can extract their specific location, after they agree to share it, and then based on the response provide geo-targeted information that would be relevant to the caller.

This is a great transition into NG311 services, something that I’m getting asked about nearly every week. I’m convinced that the biggest success factor for a government 311 service, is the user awareness programs and publicity created by agencies. This could significantly reduce the number of  ”Information calls” into the 9‑1‑1 system, while providing a public resource, and an excellent EOC environment during disasters, as the basic premise of 9‑1‑1 call taking utilizes identical infrastructure on the backend.

I believe that this is one of the areas where Avaya brings technology to the table that a normal public safety vendor does not. They have the luxury of focusing on a very narrow use case of emergency services requests. But as communications evolve and become more multimedia in nature and omni- channel, the communications architecture embedded within public safety must involve with it or it wil lbe left behind, again. Those that want to play it safe by remaining stagnant, are actually depriving constituents of modern communications that could save lives.

To the current Sparta Chief of Police Neal Spidaletto, I remember you back in the early 80’s running around the house like a little terror, driving your Dad crazy. Congrats on your appointment as Chief, I am sure Joe is very proud of your career and accomplishments.
(https://www.njherald.com/20170606/sparta-swears-in-police-chief-promotes-3-officers)
please tell ‘Baby Face Joe’ that Fuzzy says he still looks great and as distinguished as he always did. Always a great friend, and I cherish the many shifts we worked together.

Please remember to follow me on Twitter @Fletch 911, check
out all of our other podcasts at http://www.Avaya.com/APN

Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, and
SoundCloud, as well as our featured content on the iHeart radio network.

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Testing 1-2-3 . . . PART Three – Location

By: Mark J. Fletcher, ENP
Chief Architect Public Safety Solutions – AVAYA

In PART Two of this blog, we discussed the Emergency Call
Network, that segment of the PSTN dedicated to emergency calling and connecting the PSAPs together on a regional basis. In this section, we’ll cover the mobility that modern networks provide to Enterprise users, and clearly one of the most challenging pieces of information for 9-1-1 call takers to obtain.

We learned that the Selective Router in the E911 Tandem office was responsible for connecting callers to the right PSAP. That decision is made based on the Caller ID presented with the call. Initially, this was a very valid best practice, as the network was well documented, and changes were well controlled and performed by the service provider.

One Number – One Address
Telephone numbers rarely were co-located in multiple locations (with a few
exceptions) therefore the telephone number was an excellent data point usable for determining the location of a device, and the network was designed around this fact. In the mid 80’s, the Northern Telecom DMS 100 was introduced as a digital central office platform, and AT&T introduced the ESS 5 with similar capabilities.

With these new digital switching platforms, the layout inside the Central
Office radically changed from one that was mechanical stepper-motor-based to one that used a digital switching matrix, and with this automation fewer and fewer CO’s were staffed with technicians, as the building role became merely a wire center with a cross connection point for dial tone to street pairs. With the digital evolution these switches brought was a new series of custom calling features.

A Star is Born
Customers did however get some very new features, like Caller ID and feature ‘STAR-codes.’
Missed a call? Dial *69 to be connected with the last number that called. *72
along with a telephone number would forward any calls to the new destination, and depending on the services provisioned in the CO, various other features became available to customers. Many of these features took advantage of Caller ID information that was now available with the call. For the very first time, the called person could know the identity of the caller displayed on their telephone device. Caller ID (better known as Automatic Number Identification or ANI) now provided 911 centers with information about who was calling, or at least the number they were calling from. Now, if a silent call came in, or there was a question about the address and location, the original color could be easily reached. 911 centers also played games with the electrical properties on the phone lines, and it was common practice not to pass any answer or disconnect supervision from the PSAP. This providing for a simple way to keep the line open simply by
not hanging up on the public safety end.

Location, Location, Location
Without a service address, it’s impossible to send any help at the time of an
emergency. To solve this problem, 911 centers begin taking the ANI (phone
number) they were receiving with calls, in making a query back into the carrier network database that routed the call. This ALI Automatic Location Information added location to the context for wireline calls, however the cellular industry didn’t catch up, and continued to report only Phase 1 location information, which was the latitude and longitude of the radio tower the cell phone happened to connect through. With the white density of cell towers, compared to today, the effective service areas were quite large spending several miles. When cellular towers were installed on mountaintops they often lined up with political borders, once again exasperating the location problem if you’re located across the state lines hitting a remote tower due to height and proximity. This problem remained for many years, and only began to be solved as devices started to contain GPS radio receivers, but there was still an underlying problem at the network layer level.

Can You SEE Me Now?
As the density and placement of cellular towers increased, Basic radio
coverage and interoperability became commonplace. Carriers started to
interoperate with each other, and cellular handoff became a commonplace feature spanning the entire coast. Making a call with simple, but making a 911 call remained problematic. Don’t get me wrong, calls could be received and routed quite simply, however since the 911 network is a legacy analog based network, and no data channel exists to pass information on, 911 centers went into making a query to the cellular carrier asking them what visibility was available out of their network. Despite the device itself having an excellent location awareness, due to Wi-Fi fingerprints, access points, cellular towers, as well as a GPS signal when outside, the location of you what is the network looking in, and what the device had (known as handset-based location accuracy) was simply unavailable to the PSAPs, and no mechanism existed to communicate anything other than a voice path between the caller and the call taker.

Google Can Find Me . . .
Yes, I am well aware that Google, Domino’s Pizza, and a plethora of other
services are you able to locate your cellular device with incredible accuracy; in the first responders at 911 that are trying to save your life, cannot. The primary reason behind this is that because the device is utilizing an application. Also, the application has access to the device-based  location information held in the memory. This particular location information uses all of the data points that we discussed earlier, and that information is communicated back over the Internet to the host application. Once again, this is where the train goes way off the rails.

The information that is contained within the device is like having a trans-Atlantic Ocean liner that is landlocked in a lake in the middle of Kentucky. Regardless of the level of luxury, the number of passengers it holds, or the amazing abilities contained within the ship, without any use cases or access to the ocean, you’re going to have a rusting pile of steel in just a few years.

Unfortunately, this is the exact state at our Legacy PSTN network exists in
today. Consumer-based technology, the information age of the Internet, and the digital transformation that has occurred in commercial businesses, have connected the world at levels never before conceived. The devices we carry our hands and our pockets, are capable of blinding fast speeds and connectivity levels never dreamed of before. I can call, I can video, I can text, and I can email anyone on the planet; except 9-1-1. My daughter, halfway around the world on a beach in Waikiki with her boyfriend can transmit real-time high definition video from her handheld device to my handheld device 4,882 miles away with practically zero latency, but if she had a medical emergency and needed help, she would be stuck with a voice call and location inaccuracy about half mile or more if she called 911.

In any commercial enterprise space, despite be vast amount of digital
information we have available about the emergent event, the situational
awareness about the emergency, or even lifesaving information about the caller, no matter what the technology is at the origination point, the network in the receiving agency are relegated too low fidelity text based information. Why? I’m not sure I’ve gotten a good answer to that . . . . yet. But I know a few young entrepreneurs that took the problem head-on, and drove a paradigm shift change in an industry that was half a century old and very much stuck in its ways.

In Part Four of this series, we will dive into over-the-top applications, that
utilize the Internet in the open connectivity that exists nearly everywhere to take a short cut around the technology roadblocks that lay between citizens who need help, in the public safety first responders that can provide that help.

Please remember to follow me on Twitter @Fletch 911, check
out all of our other podcasts at http://www.Avaya.com/APN

Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, and
SoundCloud, as well as our featured content on the iHeart radio network.

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Tackling Enterprise 911

Kari’s Law goes into effect for ALL SYSTEMS nationwide on February 16, 2020, after the expiration of a 2-year grace period allowing system administrators to become compliant. Kari’s Law requires businesses entities with multi-line telephone systems to provide the following capabilities on all phones:

  • Allow direct dialing to 911, without any prefix
  • Provide On-Site Notification when 911 is called
  • Route 911 calls directly to the local 911 PSAP

Avaya Partner Altura Communications has started a public awareness campaign in conjunction with Avaya and 911 Secure that is designed to inform customers of the issues at hand and offer solutions that are both functionally efficient and financially affordable. You can read their 3 part Blog series by Hank Hunt, Mark Fletcher, and Kevin Kito on the topic here:

Read the Blog: 
A Daughters Cry Goes Unanswered

In part one of our three-part series examining how Kari’s Law came about, guest blogger and Kari’s father, Hank Hunt recalls that terrible night when his life changed forever

Read the Blog: 
A Grandfather’s Cry for Help Gets Answered

In part two of our three-part series examining how Kari’s Law came about, guest blogger Mark Fletcher – ENP, Avaya’s Chief Architect for Worldwide Public Safety Solutions recounts how he becomes involved

Read the Blog: 
Making Next Generation 911 a Reality

In part three of our series, Kevin Kito, CEO of 911 Secure discusses how 911 Secure brought the SENTRY™ solution to the market

A Message from Hank Hunt

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State of Emergency?

9-1-1. It is likely the most well recognized ‘brand’ in the world. It is the three digits every man, woman and child know by heart recognized around the world. 

To provide a dispatchable location to emergency responders today’s Enterprise telephone system administrators have relied on the Automatic Number Identification / Automatic Location Information (ANI/ALI) database for years. This database provided 911 dispatchers a cross-reference, or reverse lookup of telephone numbers to critical dispatch location addresses. Another function of this core component was to work in conjunction with the Selective Router Database (SRDB) used to route calls in the PSTN to the right agency. This allowed number portability, among other things

However, it appears CenturyLink has provided their Washington State Enterprise accounts with notice that they plan to discontinue their critical PS-ALI services effective May 8, 2019. After this date, enterprise customers must establish a replacement service of their own through a 3rd party provider.

They specifically state in their customer notice:

“It is the responsibility of the customer to update the PS/ALI database (via a third-party vendor) with the individual station address information.”

A copy of the new Tarifs regarding this change can be found online here.

Time for a change?

This is troubling, as the short window of remediation is going to require MLTS system operators to make a snap judgment on a technology they may not fully understand, and the predatory sales tactics of some providers may hook an Enterprise into a long-term contract for services with a minimal roadmap to the future of NG911.

For our valued Avaya customers, WE CAN HELP. Don’t get caught up in the alphabet soup of acronyms you barely understand. We have our customer’s best interests at heart, and there are many ways to address this problem. Our team of industry experts is standing by ready to help you assess your current position, and guide new solutions that solve the p[roblem today, and well into the future. Kari’s Law is federally mandated starting February 16, next year, and the Ray Baum’s Act Section 506, is following close behind requiring dispatchable addresses.

The Avaya SENTRY™ solution was designed and built to provide full NG911 functionality, even over today’s legacy networks, complete compliance with all laws (active now and in the future), and deliver critical pre-arrival instructions to 1st responders with the actionable information they need to do their jobs. We are here for you to help you decide what’s right for YOUR business.

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Moving the Yardstick With Innovation

Raymond Sims Baum (August 18, 1955 – February 9, 2018) was an American lawyer, lobbyist, and politician. His Wikipedia page notes:

Baum was born and raised in La Grande, Oregon. He studied at Brigham Young University and Willamette University College of Law. Baum was admitted to the Oregon bar in 1983 and practiced law in La Grande. Baum served in the Oregon House of Representatives in 1988. He was majority leader in the state house for the Republican Party starting in 1995 but did not seek reelection in 1996. In 2003 Ted Kulongoski appointed Baum a member of the Oregon Public Utility Commission. He served there until 2011, serving as chairman starting in 2010. Baum worked for the National Association of Broadcasters and served as vice-president of government affairs. He died at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland from prostate cancer.

In honor of his career, the Repack Airwaves Yielding Better Access for Users of Modern Services Act of 2018 or the RAY BAUM’S Act of 2018 was raised in his namesake as a testament to his service to the American people.

The RAY BAUM’s ACT  has picked up many small provisions where those issues on their own didn’t warrant, or could not muster support for their cause in a separate bill. An item particularly intriguing within this act, is in Title IV, under Section 506. It states,

“The FCC must conclude a proceeding to consider adopting rules to ensure that dispatchable location is conveyed with 9-1-1 calls, including calls from multi-line telephone systems, regardless of the technological platform used. “Dispatchable location” means the street address of the calling party and additional information necessary to adequately identify the location of the calling party.”

While I am certainly NOT a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, I can most certainly read and write the English language. The first 10 words of Section 506 say it all; “The FCC must conclude a proceeding to consider adopting rules”. That’s right, they have to finish making up their mind about having to make up their mind, or in other words, Get Ready to Get Ready. That’s it, end of the story – period.

Once again, the legacy database providers (a.k.a. the providers about to lose large revenues from database management fees) are running around telling their clients that the sky is falling, and they need to be compliant with a dispatchable location, pawning that off as individual station level reporting to the PSAP. Why? This seeds their coffers with revenue but actually provides very little actionable information to 1st responders.

For the record, I am NOT against providing detail to those responding to an emergency. In fact, I am all for that practice. What I take issue with is forcing a consumer to provide detail that is useless, at great expense and hardship, only to create revenue for those who store the data for public safety. Most often my arguments are deflected with the response, “Any small level of detail can be helpful when trying to locate a person in an emergency, and seconds count!”

Yes, seconds DO count. That is my precise argument. Instead of providing great detail that isn’t actionable (an EMT has no idea where cubicle 2C-231 is located in my building) why are we not using technology to create intelligent displays in the lobby that actually SHOWS a responder where they are needed, and how to get there in the event there is no one on site to guide them? The legacy Automatic Location Identification (ALI) record used today to convey information to first responders) is a text-only record just over 500 characters in length. There are minimal fields in there that provide the ability to include any relevant textual data.

NG911, on the other hand, is IP based and extensible. Information can contain text and URLs to additional data that can be retrieved dynamically if needed, and wherever it exists. The one problem that remains is the legacy voice network, capable of transmitting one thing and one thing only, VOICE. How do we get the data over this network?

SIMPLE: YOU CAN’T

We have been waiting for a decade or more for the NG911 ESInet to be built, but that is coming in dribs and drabs, and access is anything but ubiquitous, so we did the next best thing. We took the information we had in our SENTRY™ solution in the Shelby County Buildings Department and delivered that information to RapidSOS during a 911 call. The call reached the Memphis Police Department in Shelby County, and they were able to retrieve the associated floor plans and information about the station that placed the 911 call.

ADDITIONAL, ADDITIONAL DATA

Along with floor plan information and emergency contact context, the SENTRY™ management console allowed text notes to be added to the incident record, and those additional notes were displayed to the call taker. History was made, and we moved the yardstick.

Follow me on Twitter @Fletch911

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FIXED: Cellular E911 Location

The two biggest issues with cellular emergency services:
Text to 911 and Cellular Location Accuracy

But the question is, how can this be so in today’s ultra-modern broadband connected world?

The answer, it turns out, is simple. The Emergency services network no matter where you are located is, for the most part, an analog-based legacy infrastructure with only the ability to convey VOICE calls and no data services. Because of this simple fact, we have pigeonholed ourselves into a quagmire of isolation from the modern communications capabilities that have become commonplace and inherent in the devices nearly all of us seem to be carrying.

How do we extract ourselves from this destitute pit of captivity? The answer is quite simple. We need a rope, and it just so happens that Google has decided to provide that lifeline, with of course a brand-new acronym; AML for Advanced Mobile Location.

Currently, on the network side AML is  only deployed in Estonia and in the United Kingdon however, the functionality (which has been code-named ‘Thunderbird’) is actually embedded in every current  Android device with operating systems from Gingerbread forward. To discuss the history of Thunderbird, and how it came to be, I sat down for a Podcast with European Emergency Number Association Executive Director, and colleague of many years, Gary Machado.

Listen to the Podcast here:

Fletch:
The big story in the news is location and emergencies in cellular phones, and you guys have really come up with something that’s pretty interesting over in Europe. Tell us about AML?

Gary:
Thank you, Fletch. Yes, we came up with AML, which stands for Advanced Mobile Location, a few years ago. Actually, the idea is not ours. The Advanced Mobile Location was created in the UK in 2014 by a guy named John Medland, who works for BT 999/112 emergency services.

He basically lost faith in the EU’s ability to regulate of the sector and to contribute to the improvement of caller location in Europe, so he decided to start talking with the handset manufacturers and the mobile operators here in Europe, what in the US you call I think carriers, and he came up with a simple idea: how can we find an easy way to retrieve the location data that is in the phone that we all use everyday to order pizza, to order Uber, et cetera, and how can we take this data and deliver it to the PSAPs as easily as possible?

That’s how the project started. John led the whole project in the UK. It started slowly in 2014 with AGC, the handset manufacturer, and one mobile operator named EE, and since then, AML has been very successful. We have about 85% of locations that are below 50 meters, within 50 meters, and AML has been extended to other handset manufacturers, namely Alcatel, Sony Mobile, Samsung devices, and extended also to other mobile operators in the UK.

Fletch:
I think the big thing was when Google jumped onboard. Google saw what John had proposed doing, and basically in a nutshell, the way I explain it to people is, when the carrier, when the mobile operator looks from the network towards the handset, it’s one view, but when the handset looks out towards the world, they can see much more. It’s like looking through a peephole on a hotel room door the wrong way, right?

From the carrier side, you get a very myopic view of where that device is, but the device can take advantage of cellular, it can take advantage of GPS, it can take advantage of WiFi signals that [can be seen], not necessarily connected to, but just seen, and then all of that information together [delivers] a much more accurate resolution. One number that I saw published was 4,000 times more accurate?

Gary:
Yes. Fletch, I want to say I love the way you describe it, which is exactly correct. What happens, we actually happened to meet Google at the right time, were starting to look into the project, they were wondering on how to get this information delivered to the PSAPs, and so we actually bridged between BT in the UK, Google and ourselves and we started to have about a conference call per week, basically, and we started to progress, let’s say, the Google way, which is very fast. Yes, as you said, Google wanted to benefit from the use of their Google fused location provider and have this accurate location information we use everyday installed on all Android devices in the world. That was what they were trying to achieve. Since they saw the success of the project in the UK, which was running on Android devices already, on Android-based smartphone manufacturers, they decided to work with us and

Since they saw the success of the project in the UK, which was running on Android devices already, on Android-based smartphone manufacturers, they decided to work with us and BT to, let’s say, upgrade all the devices in the world with this accurate location. Now, where are we right now? All Android devices in the world back to Gingerbread have been upgraded with Advanced Mobile Location, so it’s in every Android phone in the world, besides a few phones that haven’t been updated because they haven’t been charged or connected to the WiFi and didn’t get the update, of course, but otherwise it’s already

Now, where are we right now? All Android devices in the world back to Gingerbread have been upgraded with Advanced Mobile Location, so it’s in every Android phone in the world, besides a few phones that haven’t been updated because they haven’t been charged or connected to the WiFi and didn’t get the update, of course, but otherwise it’s already in your phone. If you have an Android phone, AML is there. You just have to check your phone, look for the Google Play Services, and if you have a version of Google Play Services which is something like 9.0+, then you have AML in your phone. AML

You just have to check your phone, look for the Google Play Services, and if you have a version of Google Play Services which is something like 9.0+, then you have AML in your phone. AML is deployed in two countries in Europe. It is fully deployed in the UK and Estonia.

That means that everyday, UK and Estonian emergency services receive extremely accurate location information, again, 85% at below 50 meters using GPS or WiFi location, and yes, when we look at the figure, it’s about 3,000 to 4,000 times more accurate than what we get in Europe currently, which is only the primarily cell ID.

Fletch:
Before everyone runs out and turns on AML and expects this incredible accuracy to be there, there is the other side of this, and that’s the 911 center, the emergency center, the PSAP has to be able to, or the network I should say, has to be able to receive this data. One of the pieces of AML is a destination for this information to be sent, so that’s got to be in place, too. Now that’s the carrier responsibility.

Gary:
Yes. I would say the beauty of this project is its simplicity. When you dial an emergency number, 112, 911, it will trigger AML in your phone if you’re in a country where the service has been activated; in other words, where PSAPs are able to receive the information. Once you dial this number, it triggers the AML for 20 seconds, collects the location information and sends it over to the PSAPs over a mobile network.

Now there are two ways of doing that. The first way is using SMS. There are two kinds of SMSs that are used. I will not get into the specificity of those, but these two SMSs are working. One of these two can be implemented in any country. Either the message can be sent to an SMS endpoint, which is what both BT, our organization, EENA, and Google recommends, because it works in most cases, SMS, and it’s actually extremely reliable. So it can be sent to an SMS endpoint or it can be sent over HTTPS to the emergency services. Emergency services are free to choose.

In Europe, we work at the country level. [Governments] are free to choose whether they want SMS or if they want HTTPS. For now, in Europe, we have SMS installations, but other countries are deploying an HTTPS endpoint to be able to receive the AML data.

Fletch:
I’m going to assume that when you bring your handset online and you get your configuration from the carrier that this AML destination would be part of that provisioning.

Gary:
Yes. Actually, it’s managed by Google. Google defines the emergency numbers that should activate the service in a country. If a country has several emergency numbers, those numbers will trigger the AML service, which will turn on for 20 seconds and collect the location data, and then send it over to this endpoint selected by a country or a region or a county. Basically, what’s to be done by the PSAPs, the authorities and/or the mobile operator or carrier in the US, it’s very simple. Google needs to know the endpoint to be able to deliver that message. They need to be provided by an endpoint. The carrier needs to, for instance, in case of an SMS, allow it to be free of charge, and that’s what we have in most countries in Europe already with SMS for the deaf and hard of hearing, and/or they need to provide for an HTTPS endpoint to be set up, which often in the US I believe has been at the carriers rather than in the PSAPs. In Europe, we have a different setup for these things.

Fletch:
The very first thing people are going to complain about it is, “Hey, wait a second, Gary, if this thing gets turned on, Google’s going to start tracking my location. It’s bad enough that they know every website I go to and they’re putting cookies all over my phone, now they’re going to be tracking my specific locations and what I’m doing. I’ve already got the NSA in the US doing that. I don’t need Google on top of that doing the same thing.” Is there going to be pushback?

Gary:
As you can guess, we get it over here in Europe even more than in North America. People are very, very concerned about it here. I can say I have myself a certain interest for these issues. I actually help some of the privacy activist organizations here in Brussels on my private time, let’s say, and I never switch on my location on my own, for instance, but in case of emergency service, I want to have my location turned on. The beauty of this project and working with Google for more than a year, they have been extremely cautious with that. The location just turns on for the time of triggering the AML and turns off after 20 seconds. Google does not store that location. Google doesn’t want to see that location. That location is retrieved and is sent over to the PSAPs in an SMS or HTTPS, and that’s it. Google doesn’t want to see that location. I think, honestly, no one is [inaudible 00:11:05]. Google has plenty of locations everyday. I don’t think they are looking for more of that project. That’s not what they are looking for.

The location just turns on for the time of triggering the AML and turns off after 20 seconds. Google does not store that location. Google doesn’t want to see that location. That location is retrieved and is sent over to the PSAPs in an SMS or HTTPS, and that’s it. Google doesn’t want to see that location. I think, honestly, no one is [inaudible 00:11:05]. Google has plenty of locations everyday. I don’t think they are looking for more of that project. That’s not what they are looking for.

Fletch:
So they never even get the data to be able to store it. It goes directly into the public safety networks.

Gary:
Exactly.

Fletch:
Let’s face it, if you’re having an emergency, your location is something that you probably want to share. 

Gary:
Yes, exactly. That’s the case, and I’m sure it’s the same in the US, but in Europe, we have the proper legislation for that, that in case of emergency call, caller location is authorized. Yes, that’s one of the very few times where you actually need and you want your location to be used.

Fletch:
I’ve got to tell you, when I first saw this back in 2014 over in Europe, I was a little hesitant. I was a little hesitant because it was operating system-specific. At that time it was carrier-specific and even handset-specific, and [I thought], interesting idea, but it’s going to be the adoption that really makes this happen, and although it’s taken a couple of years, it is actually a great idea. It’s very simple in its form, it’s very basic. It doesn’t require a big uplift in the network. It doesn’t require huge upgrades in the PSAPs. It’s just a simple activation of information that’s already there, and it’s information that most devices already have anyway. Again, like you said before, if I want to order a pizza or if I want to order an Uber, they know exactly where I am with incredible accuracy, so it’s just activating that function that’s already there and creating the mechanism to transport that over to the PSAP, the people that actually need to use that. Really kind of a brilliant idea and John, John’s a great guy and I’ve known John for many years over at BT. It really took a lot of stamina just to keep pounding his foot down and saying, “This will work,” and getting Google in there is a big deal. Obviously the big question, what about iOS and Apple and Microsoft? What’s happening with those guys? Have they mentioned anything about this?

It’s very simple in its form, it’s very basic. It doesn’t require a big uplift in the network. It doesn’t require huge upgrades in the PSAPs. It’s just a simple activation of information that’s already there, and it’s information that most devices already have anyway. Again, like you said before, if I want to order a pizza or if I want to order an Uber, they know exactly where I am with incredible accuracy, so it’s just activating that function that’s already there and creating the mechanism to transport that over to the PSAP, the people that actually need to use that. Really kind of a brilliant idea and John, John’s a great guy and I’ve known John for many years over at BT. It really took a lot of stamina just to keep pounding his foot down and saying, “This will work,” and getting Google in there is a big deal. Obviously the big question, what about iOS and Apple and Microsoft? What’s happening with those guys? Have they mentioned anything about this?

Really kind of a brilliant idea and John is a great guy.  I’ve known him for many years over at BT. It really took a lot of pounding his foot down and saying, “This will work,” and getting Google in there is a big deal. Obviously the big question, what about iOS and Apple and Microsoft? What’s happening with those guys? Have they mentioned anything about this?

Gary:
First, I want to join you here in saying I really admire what John has done. He’s taken this idea, he’s been fighting for it. He’s been going step by step. He’s very cautious. He wanted to validate every step of the project. We owe John a lot, as all in the public safety community, I believe. I also want to thank the guys at Google, of course, and also congrats to the Estonians. The Estonians implemented AML in less than six months with Google and they are one of the countries that are fully enabled right now. About Apple and Microsoft, we are in contact with Microsoft, trying to get some information, some progress on this. At this stage, we do not see a lot, but we are hopeful that it will progress. We are also trying to get in touch with Apple. We’ve informed Apple via many emails, conference calls and so on. We haven’t seen a lot back from Apple, though we actually discovered just by Googling one day that Apple has published a patent on the location topic, which seems to be rather an idea pretty similar to what we’ve just talked about during this podcast. Very interesting. Very interesting. We’re hopeful that Apple will join the project. We also started to see the first articles, one article in Estonia last week, clearly explain that they believe that Apple will start joining the

We haven’t seen a lot back from Apple, though we actually discovered just by Googling one day that Apple has published a patent on the location topic, which seems to be rather an idea pretty similar to what we’ve just talked about during this podcast. Very interesting. Very interesting. We’re hopeful that Apple will join the project. We also started to see the first articles, one article in Estonia last week, clearly explain that they believe that Apple will start joining the project, because people will think of Google’s Android phone as the safe phones. That was an opinion written in an Estonian article, which is in English.

Fletch:
I have to agree with that. If somebody’s going to make a telephone purchase and this one has got safety features that this one does not, that’s going to become a decision. If I’m going to buy a phone for my daughter who’s going off to college now, I’m going to make sure she’s got a phone that’s going to provide her with as much safety as possible. That’s going to bring the financial model into play and it’s not going to be long before somebody over in Cupertino says, “Hey, wait a second, sales are going down. We need to turn this on,” and Microsoft’s going to do the same.

Gary:
Let’s hope so. Apple Keynote is coming out soon, so, let’s wait.

Fletch:
Listen, Gary, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you. It’s been a while since we’ve chatted. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about this. Tremendous progress on this. Congratulations to everybody over at EENA who drove this, and of course to John Medland over at BT, who had the brainchild and the fortitude to get this program moving.

Gary:
Thanks, Fletch. Bye-bye.

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Does 911 Work in Government Buildings?

On February 22nd, 2012, President Obama signed H.R. 3630, also known as the Middle-Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012  into  law. In this Act, under Section 6504 -REQUIREMENTS FOR MULTILINE TELEPHONE SYSTEMS- it  states explicitly that “[T]he Administrator of General Services, in conjunction with the Office, shall issue a report to Congress identifying the 911 capabilities of the multiline telephone system in use by all federal agencies in all federal buildings and properties.” The GSA, in addition to being the purchasing arm of the US Government, is the agency responsible for constructing, managing, and preserving government buildings by leasing and managing commercial real estate. According to their website, http://gsa.gov, the agency also promotes management best practices and efficient government operations through the development of government-wide policies, and their mission is “[T]o deliver the best value in real estate, acquisition, and technology services to government and the American people.” In total, they are responsible for nearly 10,000 federally owned or leased buildings, all of which would have been covered by the aforementioned GSA report that was required by Congress. It only seems logical that the US Government, a large Enterprise in itself, would have the same concerns that commercial businesses have with proper 911 access from Federal Buildings.

The Dog Ate my Homework

As of Saturday, June 18, 2016, that report remains 1308 days (three years and seven months) past due. The Act also required that no later than 90 days after the date of enactment, a notice is issued seeking comment from MLTS manufacturers on the feasibility of including within all systems manufactured mechanisms to provide sufficiently precise indications of a 911 callers location.

MLTS manufacturers have long since responded with features and functionality to address emergency calling from these types of systems systems, and most, if not all, contain the basic capabilities to deal with the situation, requiring add-on functionality for only the more complex environments. There still remains, however, a lack of awareness and in many cases these features are not properly configured or  implemented. This simple lack of awareness leaves many government employees at risk. History has proven time and time again that this problem knows no boundaries  affecting schools, businesses, hotels, and any other facility where a multi-line telephone system is used. While admittedly, surveying all 9,600 properties reportedly under the control of GSA, the mandate ordered in this Law was not to remediate the problem; the mandate was to produce a report on the scope and expanse on the problem.

What You Don’t Know MAY Hurt You

It is only with the information from this report that the facts become well understood, and assessments of the risk can be made. If nothing else, awareness of the problem will be raised.  Despite the current situation, has every new facility opened or upgraded in the past three years had this situation addressed? Likely not. The problem is well known, and documented, and to ignore it at this point is simply foolish and borderline egregious.

Case in point, the Federal Communications Commission headquarters building in Washington, DC itself was noncompliant and unable to dial 911 directly, as reported by FCC Commissioner Michael O’Reilly in his June 2, 2014, blog. Commissioner O’Reilly reported, “Our employees and any visitors must dial 9-911 to reach help in an emergency.  I asked that the agency look into options for fixing this problem.  Since then, we have learned how simple reprogramming our telephone system would be.” A short time later, Chairman Tom Wheeler ordered the system to be reprogrammed, and FCC staff are now able to dial 911 directly.

This glaring lack of compliance for basic emergency calling could have been noted on a report issued by the GSA on multiline telephone system capabilities for emergency calling, had they produced one. But unfortunately, they did not, and as of this point that report is more than a year and a half overdue. How many other buildings suffer this same ailment? Likely many if history in the Enterprise space is any indicator.

fcc-commissioner-ajit-pai-cropOn March 11, 2015, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai sent a letter to acting GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth asking about the status of this report directly requested by Congress, and as part of the Law enacted with HR 3630. At the time the letter was sent, the report was 843 days overdue, yet to this date, there has been nothing but silence from the GSA. One has to wonder, if we need to wait for another tragedy to occur, and an innocent life lost before we recognize this simple problem and address it? The other burning questions are; Why is the GSA withholding this information? Have they done any work at all in the past 3 1/2 years? Are they worried that they are so out of compliance that a considerable expense would be required to correct the issue?

Is is Broken? Then FIX IT!

If the GSA is responsible for facilities and the technology, I am sure this also includes maintenance coverage for ‘break-fix’ matters that come up from time to time. I will offer the point of view that if my phone system will not dial 911 effectively and report the proper information to local emergency services personnel, then that system is broken, and should be fixed. We can no longer ignore this critical life safety issue. Additionally, how bold do you have to be to ignore a formal request by an FCC Commissioner? Obviously, brave enough to also overlook a mandated order by the U.S. Congress, as designated by Federal law.

One also has to wonder, where is the US GAO in all of this? This independent, nonpartisan agency works for Congress and is often called the “congressional watchdog,” part of their job is to investigate how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. If MLTS systems were purchased, and not able to dial 911, I would imagine that could be argued as a point of dispute, between the US Government and the supplier. At least for any system purchased and installed after Congress passed the bill and it became law.

Who’s shoulders does this fall on? According to their web page, the head of GAO, the Comptroller General of the United States, is appointed to a 15-year term by the President from a slate of candidates Congress proposes. Gene L. Dodaro became the eighth Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on December 22, 2010, when he was confirmed by the United States Senate. He was nominated by President Obama in September of 2010 from a list of candidates selected by a bipartisan, bicameral congressional commission. He had been serving as Acting Comptroller General since March of 2008.

Who Let the Dog Out? No One

If the GAO is the “Congressional watchdog”, shouldn’t they look into this issue? I believe so. Transparency, openly ignoring authority, and failure to perform tasks that are legally obligated seems to be something that would be right in their wheelhouse.

Follow me on Twitter @Fletch911
Read my other AVAYA CONNECTED Blogs

Mark J. Fletcher, ENP is the Chief Architect for Worldwide Public Safety Solutions at Avaya. As a seasoned professional with nearly 30 years of service, he directs the strategic roadmap for Next Generation Emergency Services in both the Enterprise and Government portfolios at Avaya. In 2014, Fletcher was made a member of the NENA Institute Board in the US, in 2014 – 2015 he served as co-chair of the EENA NG112 Committee in the European Union, providing valuable insight to State and Federal legislators globally driving forward both innovation and compliance.

 

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With more than 3 decades of experience, I have worked in almost every segment of the telecommunications industry; With many years in the field as a technician, as well as experience building and managing several of the world’s largest private voice networks, I have a unique view of the telecommunications industry from various perspectives, including extensive knowledge of both TDM and VoIP environments. I was honored to be the inaugural recipient of the “INNUA Partnership Award”, and in 2009 was named by The National Emergency Number Association as the 9-1-1 Professional of the Day during the National Public Safety Telecommunications Week. I proudly hold the NENA Emergency Number Professional (ENP) accreditation. In my current position as Corporate Solutions Technologist and Chief Architect for Avaya’s Public Safety Solutions, I ensures the roadmap and strategy of Avaya meets the requirements of the field with new product development and direction in both the Enterprise and Government markets, and has a solid roadmap to Next Generation Emergency Services globally. I am asked to speak at many international industry and user group events, and have been recognized internationally for my weekly Podcasts and Avaya CONNECTED Blogs. In addition to my Avaya role, I represent Avaya as an active member in several Public Safety and E911 organizations. I hold a position on the FCC Disability Advisory Committee, and the FCC Task Force for Optimized PSAP Architectures. I am proud to serve on the APCO International Standards Development Committee, as well as a regular contributor to the European Emergency Number Association activities. I am often called upon to provide technical input to legislators and regulators as well as the industry in general, in an effort to drive forward NG Emergency Services compliance.

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Why cellular 911 has location problems

For those of you who read my regular Blog here, I am happy (and proud) to announce that Network World has graciously given me a regular Blog on the Network World site.

I will not be duplicating content from this blog. The Network World content will be all original. Also I will not be posting the NWW content here, but will provide a brief synopsis of the NWW content a day or so after it is published, this week I bring you:

Why cellular 911 has location problems

Most calls to emergency 911 come from wireless callers, yet the system for locating those callers can’t handle them.
Enjoy!

 

Follow me on Twitter @Fletch911
Read my other AVAYA CONNECTED Blogs

Mark J. Fletcher, ENP is the Chief Architect for Worldwide Public Safety Solutions at Avaya. As a seasoned professional with nearly 30 years of service, he directs the strategic roadmap for Next Generation Emergency Services in both the Enterprise and Government portfolios at Avaya. In 2014, Fletcher was made a member of the NENA Institute Board in the US, in 2014 – 2015 he served as co-chair of the EENA NG112 Committee in the European Union, providing valuable insight to State and Federal legislators globally driving forward both innovation and compliance.

 

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Predictive Assistance via Caller Context

A concern that can exist in nearly any city, county, state, or even country, is that once an easy to remember emergency number, such as 911 in the US, 112 across the European Union, and the 999 available in the UK, has been deployed, massive misuse of the system by non-emergency calls starts to put strain on the network; equipment and even staff must now cope with the increase of non-emergency citizen outreach beyond the purpose of the service. Because there isn’t a catchall category of call types, there often isn’t a single, all-encompassing solution to the problem. Technology can help and when properly deployed, is capable of providing support for dealing with many of the strains that are put on Emergency Networks and Systems.

The Architecture Problem:

 

BLOG-PO-Pic1
Fig. 1 Silos of Call Types for Public Safety and Citizen Services

 

In the past, when we built and designed Public Safety networks, the solutions were siloed, purpose built creating disparate, disconnected islands of connectivity. An agency decided what their inbound traffic would be for that particular service, and then engineer the incoming trunks for a P.01 grade of service, meaning that 1 out of every 100 calls could be blocked during the busy hour. This is a standard level that is accepted by the Public Safety industry for Public Safety Answer Points.

But this creates a problem when a service (9-1-1 for example) receives more calls than expected. Typically, they would track analytics and call volume reports that displayed trend information. These reports guided them on the increase of the number of positions and trunks to handle the new projected call loads. You would think that expansion should not be a problem for agencies, as they are tasked with providing service to a geographic area, and when the population increases, call volumes increase and budgets should naturally increase.

Unfortunately, however, quite often population increases along with call volume, but agencies are always being asked (read demanded) to do more with less.

BLOG-PO-Pic2
Fig. 2 Interagency trunking disrupts traffic engineering formulas

While other organizations may be able to aide with the call volume, the problem of citizens dialing 9-1-1 for everything and anything still exists. Because the network was built as independent islands of service, virtual inter-agency barriers naturally evolved. In specific cases, inter-departmental trunking can be created that allows adjacent agencies to transfer calls over those facilities directly. Now the caller is communicating with the right resource that can assist them, and we have freed up the original 9-1-1 resource to allow them to take another call, but we create another problem on the back end.

 

BLOG-PO-Pic3
Fig. 3 – Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet)

Although the issue of routing is solved, the problem still exists where the limited trunking that connects the 9-1-1 center to the PSTN remains an issue and another blockage point. This blockage is easily corrected. By removing these trunks from the equation, and replacing or augmenting them with an IP pipe that is dynamically expanded and contracted as needed, based on the application of rules logic that takes into consideration the number of available 9-1-1 call takers that are currently available and ready to take calls.

 

While I realize that every Public Safety person who is reading this just got a chill up their spine, and muttered, “Your CRAZY Fletch”, this is what needs to happen to solve the problem, and is not new bleeding edge technology. in fact, local carriers have been offering SIP-based trunking to the commercial market for years. The technology has been refined and the largest contact centers in the world use this architecture to bring calls into their network, where they decide the best resource to apply to the inbound call.

BLOG-PO-Pic4With the right tools on the right network, solving these type of problems becomes simpler and a routine process in the contact center, and there is no reason why this technology and thought process cannot be applied to Public Safety Answer Points to assist in improving efficiency and reliability during large-scale national disasters. At the same time, this can also radically improve service to callers. For example, meet Ava. Ava requires 911 services on a regular basis. She is considered to be, what Public Safety has nicknamed, a ‘Frequent Flyer.’
This term is not meant to be derogatory, in fact, Ava has a medical condition that requires Emergency Transportation much more often that the average citizen, but her condition is not life-threatening.

When Ava calls 9-1-1 for medical transport, most of the time, resources are available and dispatched immediately. But on occasion, Ava’s request arrives in the middle of complete chaos. Because the 9-1-1 network is unable to differentiate Ava’s call from any other call being processed by the system, all calls are treated with the same priority level, despite the vast prior history and information that may be available. By collecting and examining this information in a context store, and associating it with a particular call event can dynamically apply specialized call handling. Simply by knowing that Ava is a frequent flyer caller, and her condition is not life-threatening, her call is answered by a Speech Recognition enabled IVR that collects the relevant information giving Ava the opportunity to escalate the call to a call taker.

N11 – More than just Emergencies

9-1-1 has been called the most widely recognized ‘brand element’ in the world. Nearly everyone is aware of the number, and despite the attempt to increase awareness of other avenues of access, 9-1-1 remains to be the winner. Unbeknownst to many in the US, several other N-1-1 services are available to citizens. In most of the cases, these are geographically routed the same way 9-1-1 emergency calls are routed to centers that are close to the caller. Following the N-1-1 format, these easy to remember numbers are as follows:

2-1-1  Reserved for the World Health Organization and Red Cross
3-1-1  Reserved for local government non-emergency services
4-1-1  Not officially reserved, but often used for local Telco information
5-1-1  Reserved for Highway and Traffic information systems
6-1-1  Not officially reserved, but often used for local Telco repair
7-1-1  TDD Relay services for Deaf, Hard of Hearing or Disability
8-1-1  Reserved for the Call before You Dig utility mark-out hotline

While these services can often provide valuable information to citizens, they are often under-publicized, and under-utilized. By consolidating connectivity in the cloud, we gain flexibility in dynamically adjusting the trunking required, and calls destined for other agency remediation. This can effectively eliminate the public education and awareness problem. While the dialed number can be an indicator of the nature of the request, calls can still be handled efficiently, and resources are no longer limited and blocked.

Proactive Citizen Outreach

When a known issue exists, reaching out to the public in an affected area can be an efficient and dynamic countermeasure that can significantly reduce the number of inquiries for more information while reassuring concerned citizens that an issue is being addressed. In addition to providing information, a query can be made to ensure no other problems exist. If the citizen does have an additional concern, the system is already ‘context aware’ of the identity of the citizen, and they can be queued up against the appropriate resource. Upon connection to the person or agency that can provide the additional information they need, information about the previous interaction can be displayed to the call taker, facilitating quicker response and better service levels.

Follow me on Twitter @Fletch911
Read my other AVAYA CONNECTED Blogs

 

Mark J. Fletcher, ENP is the Chief Architect for Worldwide Public Safety Solutions at Avaya. As a seasoned professional with nearly 30 years of service, he directs the strategic roadmap for Next Generation Emergency Services in both the Enterprise and Government portfolios at Avaya. In 2014, Fletcher was made a member of the NENA Institute Board in the US, in 2014 – 2015 he served as co-chair of the EENA NG112 Committee in the European Union, providing valuable insight to State and Federal legislators globally driving forward both innovation and compliance.

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