Congratulations to New York City on the Passage of Kari’s Law
West commends the New York City Council for the recent passage of the new law, “Requiring direct telephone access to 911 service.” The passage of this law ensures that New Yorkers using multi-line telephone systems (MLTS) in certain businesses and City agencies have easy, direct access to 9-1-1 service in an emergency.
The law is modeled on Kari’s Law, so-named in honor of Kari Hunt whose tragic passing in 2013 alerted the nation to the dangers of requiring a dialing prefix to access 9-1-1. Simply, this new NYC law will allow users of these MLTS to dial 9-1-1 without requiring any prefix, post-fix or trunk access code. In addition to the direct dialing provision, the law also requires that on-site notifications be issued when 9-1-1 is dialed and that calls must be directly delivered to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP).
Don’t compromise your enterprise – understanding the role of notifications in your E9-1-1 solution
If you’ve been tasked with choosing an E9-1-1 solution for your enterprise, it can be tempting to set up an on-site notification alert and have emergency responders receive the location details they need once they arrive on-site. While this strategy seems to be able to keep your organization safe, make no mistake: implementing notification alerts on their own as an E9-1-1 solution can place your organization and your employees in grave danger. For E9-1-1, relaying an accurate, dispatchable address to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) is essential; this ensures that first responders arrive with the information they need to quickly locate and help the caller.
When less is not more. How three-way call monitoring saves lives.
When 911 is dialed, most organizations know that they need to deliver both the call and the caller’s location information to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). In an IP-based communications network, this is achieved with E9-1-1 management appliances and call routing solutions.
As an added feature with many of these solutions, you can also notify internal security of a 911 call in progress, using screen pops, emails, and pre-recorded messages. Although these notifications provide enough basic information (extension #, location, and name) to alert security of a 911 call, they do not provide enough situational awareness for security to act on. Read More >
The Elements of a Great E9-1-1 RFPhttps://www.west.com/wp-admin/edit.php
A well-researched and comprehensive E9-1-1 Request For Proposal (RFP) is an invaluable tool when selecting an E9-1-1 solution for your organization. It allows you to easily evaluate competing solutions and clearly decide, which one is most appropriate for your unique deployment. Getting the information you need to make an informed decision does not have to be a challenging or complicated matter, if you make sure to include a few key elements in your E9-1-1 RFP.
Elements of a Great E9-1-1 Request For Proposal
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