Effective January 2021, new PBX installations are required to implement new granularity in E911 calls. Traditionally, E911 calls provide the PSAP (Public Safety Answering Points or emergency dispatch center) with the Name, Address, and contact information based on the caller’s CALLERID (10 digit phone number). If the customer has a large multi-story building or multi-building campus setting then the PSAP only receives standard USPS street level address information. This can cause extra time spent by first responders when they arrive trying to precisely locate where the 911 issue is located. For this reason, Ray Baum’s Act was enacted to require an entity to send to the PSAP the Building, Floor, and Room information that is tied to each handset on the customer’s PBX. In addition, ingress and egress door locations are further identified to facilitate the most aggressive approach to the affected area, street location, door number, floor, room, etc. All carriers are required to support this feature. This is a federal law; violators are subject to FCC fines.
There are only two methods for supporting this new requirement. First, you could assign a unique DID (10 digit phone number) to every handset in your organization. This is extremely costly and difficult to maintain. Imagine having to submit a “Sales Order” for every unique location and then your users change locations throughout the year. The maintenance cost in this scenario is huge – and this is the way most carriers are handling the issue currently.
Ambit’s SIP Trunking Solution utilizes a patented approach for handling Ray Baum’s Act. Our PBX’s are equipped with a special piece of software that provides a unique serial number for every extension. When a 911 call is initiated this piece of software takes the CALLERID (facility based) and adds the unique handset serial number and then passes it to Ambit’s 911 system. This system then does a look-up of the Building, Floor, and Room data based on the serial number and passes that on to the PSAP. The result is a solution cost that is about one-third that of traditional carriers. And more importantly, a maintenance process that can be handled in a spreadsheet for changes to handset locations long term. Ambit Solutions can effectively and timely handle your Ray Baum’s Act requirements!
