CLASSOUND E911 Compliance

E911 Regulations

Enhanced 911 (E911) is an enhanced version of 911 system used in the US for calls seeking emergency assistance such as police, fire, and ambulance services. E911 is regulated by the following laws:

• Kari’s Law: requires the direct dialing of 911 be enabled without having to dial a prefix to reach an outside line. Kari’s Law also directs the FCC to develop necessary 911 calling regulations for the multi-line telephone systems (MLTS) that are commonly used for communications services in buildings, like hotels, hospitals, and most office campuses. When a 911 call is placed from an MLTS, a notification must be sent to on-site personnel, alerting them to the emergency. The notifications to the appropriate contact can take the form of phone calls, visual alerts on a monitor, audible alarms, text messages, and/or emails

• RAY BAUM’S Act (Repack Airwaves Yielding Better Access for Users of Modern Services Act): requires a dispatchable location (defined as: “the street address of the calling party, and additional information such as room number, or similar information necessary to adequately identify the location of the calling party”) of any 911 call to be sent to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). This would allow 911 call centers to receive the automatic location information of the caller, and dispatch to emergency responders more quickly

The solution for the E911 compliance is available for every Wildix device (for non-fixed devices - starting from January 2022), for every system installed in the US that has CLASSOUND service enabled, without any additional configuration.

Check the Blog Post: https://blog.wildix.com/E911-regulations-what-MSPs-need-to-know.

Wildix Requirements

To comply with E911 Regulations, there are several requirements:

1. Check min. supported versions of Wildix devices

E911 Compliance starts from:

• Collaboration and WP Phones/ W-AIR Devices/ FXS Gateways - WMS 6.0X and higher

• Android Collaboration App - 5.04.05 

• iOS Collaboration App - 8.4.55876

• x-bees Web - WMS 6.05.20231210 and higher

• Android / iOS x-bees App - 1.45.1.173159

• Collaboration 7 Web - WMS 7.0X

• Android / iOS Collaboration 7 App - 2.08.1.335083

2. Set Country Code

• Make sure that Country Code set up in WMS Settings -> PBX -> Language & region is +1 (US/ Canada) or user's office number has the prefix +1

3. Allow geolocation for web calls

• Important for Collaboration/ Collaboration 7/ x-bees! Geolocation must be enabled in the browser, otherwise outgoing non-emergency calls will be blocked (emergency calls cannot be blocked, so make sure users enable geolocation)

4. Add 911 address via WMP

1. Log in to WMP -> go to Customers tab 

2. Choose Customer -> Pbxes -> Devices:

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3. Select the necessary device and click Edit emergency address button on the right:

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4. Provide details of the address on the Emergency 911 address screen that pops up and click Submit:

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5. The new address is displayed in Emergency 911 address column. You can see its validation status under DLR Validation.

To update address of several devices at once:

1. Tick off necessary devices and click Bulk 911 address button above the table:

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2. Enter address details and click Submit

Third party devices

To comply with E911 regulations, third party (non-Wildix) devices must be submitted via a support ticket, which must include all information required for configuration. You can find more information about submitting a support ticket here.

Required information

When submitting third-party devices, the following information must be included:

• Network and device structure: A description of the deployment structure, including devices and their addresses.

• Dialplan configuration: Confirmation that the Dialplans are configured with the correct SIP header (X-Caller-Device).

For third-party devices, this header is not added automatically. To ensure the device is correctly identified on outbound calls, the X-Caller-Device header must be manually added in the Dialplan using the MAC address of the device that initiated the call on the first leg.

How to add the X-Caller-Device header manually

Follow these steps to manually add the X-Caller-Device header:

1. Go to WMS → PBX → Dialplan -> Dialplan rules

2. Open the required Dialplan or create a new one

3. Add two Custom applications with the following data:

• Custom application -> Set(MAC=${SHELL(echo ${SIP_HEADER(User-Agent)} | cut -d " " -f4 | tr -d ":" | tr -d "\n")})

• Custom application -> SIPAddHeader(X-Caller-Device: ${MAC})

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After configuring and provisioning a third-party device, it is recommended to verify that the correct emergency address is applied. To validate your geolocation, you can dial 933. When you dial the number, it'll play back the phone number and address that you provided to Wildix.

E911 Call Flow

When you dial 911 from any Wildix device, your call with your phone number and address is automatically routed to a PSAP, which then dispatch a local emergency responder to the address you provided as your location. 

When a you place a call from Collaboration / Collaboration 7 /  x-bees Mobile App, the call is always sent to the local network operator via the native dialer.

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Available codes for Emergency calls

The following codes are available for Emergency calls in the United States:

• 911, 933, 988, 811, 711, 411

or:

• +1911, +1933, +1811, +1711, +1411

911 PSAP Outage Notification Rules

According to the FCC requirements and guidelines, specifically the 911 PSAP Outage Notification Rules, PSAPs should be notified of actual or potential network outages. 

To ensure compliance with the FCC requirements, Partners should open a Technical Support ticket, providing the following information in case of an outage:

• PBX serial number

• List of DID numbers on the PBX

• US states affected

• Best-known cause of the outage 

• Outage impact (choose one of the options below)

  • Users may be unable to complete 911 calls

  • Operators may experience call quality issues

  • Operators may experience call quality issues and loss of location information

  • Operators may experience loss of location information

• Incident start time

• Expected resolution time