An E911-NG911 Update – From Both Sides of the Border

The Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago was the venue for the annual Real-Time Communications Conference and Expo held October 15-17 this year. The event this year featured tracks that addressed Cloud Communications, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, IPTComm, Mobility, Web and Emerging Technologies and Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG911).

The conference is unique in that academia and industry have the opportunity to hear keynote presentations and plenary sessions and gain some perspective on issues of importance.

The IIT 911 Track focused on some of the technical issues that the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) are addressing.

The first panel discussion featured Henning Schulzrinne, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the United States Federal Communications Commission and Professor and Chair in the Department of Computer Science also with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. Roger Hixson is part of the National Emergency Number Association, and serves as the Director of Technical Issues. Dr. Christian Vogler is the director of the Technology Access Program and is a principal investigator within the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Telecommunications Access. The final panelist was Gunnar Hellstrom, who specializes in Telecommunications and Information Technology accessible for people with disabilities and is the founder of Omnitor, Sweden, a company devoted to product development and service provision in this area.

The discussion was very interesting and focused on issues that face the hard of hearing, hearing/speech impaired and the need to get to NG911. Without going through a complete review of the discussion, the main discussion points included:

• A voice centric world is no longer voice centric
  
  
• Technological opportunity exists in the area of non-voice apps
  
  
• What can be done to make improvements to improve 911 access
  
  
• Accessibility will be by design rather than something that gets bolted on
  
  
• TTY devices do not work in an IP world and alternatives need to be developed
  
  
• The TTY is outdated technology but unsurpassed functionality by any other device
  
  
• MCLS enables NG911 telecommunications to communicate
  
  
• All PSAP’s will need to accept national SMS text in order to provide consistent service across the nation
  
  
• Caller ability to effectively utilize emergency text when needed across the nation ASAP

The Canadian side of the NG911 debate was front and center in the nation’s capital, Ottawa, in November. The event was the annual meetings for the Canadian APCO and NENA associations. Canada is not as advanced as the United States in the rollout of NG911, so some of the discussion and presentations were geared to providing background.

In a NG911 basics presentation some discussion included the question what does NG911 really mean, and included the following:

• A solution to accommodate access to emergency services for existing and emerging technologies and services
  
  
• A system of systems, an architecture built around Internet Protocol
  
  
• An architecture using Open Standards instead of proprietary software
  
  
• Policy & Data driven using software applications and databases in an IP environment
  
  
• A solution to better accommodate technology and services evolution

One significant difference is that T911 or text 911 is that, in Canada, it will be text from 911 not text to 911. This may be a bit confusing, but the initial rollout of the text 911 option will be limited to those that pre-register for this service.

The arguments for the change to NG911 range from “Aging system developed for voice calls,” “Public expectations and demands” to “Legacy networks to be decommissioned” or that technology development is having an impact on the development of enhanced emergency communications.

One thing can be said regardless of which side of the border you are on: there are a lot of very dedicated people working to help us get to NG911. The biggest challenge to overcome is funding.

2 Responses to "An E911-NG911 Update – From Both Sides of the Border" - Add Yours

Mark Fletcher, ENP 11/29/2013 4:46:28 PM

While you partially covered the NG911 track, you failed to mention the panel on the Enterprise contribution to NG911 using additional data methods that will replace the archaic analog method today. The panel included representatives from solution providers, manufacturers and the City of Chicago Office of Emergency Management discussing how information from the new network will drastically change how Public Safety responds and uses these additional data feeds to provide better service more efficiently and ultimately reduce the costs of the service.

It is most likely that the initial source of end to end NG911 calls will originate from the Enterprise networks, since they have data to share, and the infrastructure in place to connect to the new networks. In addition to those with disabilities that benefit from multi-modal communications with public safety, all users will benefit from Enterprise enabled NG911 as additional information about an incident such as environmental conditions reported by a smart building can add additional clarity to an unfolding situation like a fire.

Funding is not the issue, The existing E911 infrastructure is aging out and must be replaced regardless of NG911 or not. New Emergency Service IP Networks are more efficient to operate providing greater capacity at a lower cost, and offer the same FCE benefits for DR and Contingency that commercial networks enjoy.

The funding already exists, it just needs to be directed efficiently to the advancement of the new network, instead of keeping the existing one on life support.

Mark J. Fletcher, ENP
Chief Architect - Avaya
WW Public Safety Solutions

Art Rosenberg 12/4/2013 8:11:39 AM

Interesting perspective for the future of multi-modal consumer communications.

I also note that separating the needs of a contact initiator from that of the contact recipient will be very useful for handicapped users, and the people (or automated applications) they will interact with. That kind of capability is actually buried within the heart of UC-enabled communications, but often overlooked because of the legacy view of synchronous telephony. Today, we have voicemail to text messaging and text-to-speech retrieval, so it is only a matter of making it "near-real-time," as in IM chat, that we can handle end users needs more flexibly.