Fun when testing 911 service

[Ryland]

I had a fun experience when testing out 911 service for a national customer.

This customer has 9 remote locations around the country. As part of maintenance I was testing out and confirming 911 service for each location.

As part of the process I would setup a VPN connection into the network, associate my soft phone and user group to the given site. Then I would place a test call to 911 service.

911 - "911 what is the nature of the emergency?"
me - "This is a non emergency"

I explain that I am testing a companies IP phone system and wanted to confirm some information. We confirm the address of the location and that system is working correctly. I think the person was bored because she then started asking me questions about it.

I explained that I was in MI testing this out for the CA office at the moment, with each comment she kept getting more excited. Saying that's cool. Wow how does that work. What a cool system. We talked for about 10 mins about it.

I just really enjoyed the interaction and figured I would share.

Ryland Marshall
Certified ShoreTel System Engineer

Any comments that I make are purely my opinion. I am not a ShoreTel employee and do not represent them in any way, other then loving the product. Any advise that I may give is to be used at your own risk, I can not take responsibility for any harm that my come from your decision to use my advise.

[Scott]

Morning after a cut over with NO user training.

I was forced to cut an office over a few years back (shoretel ver 3.1) Without ever showing the new employees a phone. I moved the 50 users office over a weekend and installed ShoreTel and was not given the chance to train any of the users. Needless to say the recepcienst was FREAKING out on Monday morning. Her first hour of taking calls she kept saying "thank you for calling MIS, I hope I don't hang up on you". By the end of the day she was a pro!

Scott

[tnshurtm]

Are there any laws pertaining to "testing" 911 services? I want to test when the system is up an running, I just don't want to get fined or anything.

[cburgy]

Are there any laws pertaining to "testing" 911 services? I want to test when the system is up an running, I just don't want to get fined or anything.

Good question. They haven't said anything to us although they do get irritated if you call in multiple times for testing. We ran into a scenario with teleworkers not passing the right 911 CID. Evidently, Time Warner Telecom overwrites the 911 caller id to be the business telephone number. The only other option is to pass one of the DID numbers associated with the PRI as 911 and they will pass it along.

[Forum]

In Florida, I contact the local to find out what the non-emergancy number is that has 911 functionality. I then call and clearly state that I am testing a new phone system, and I verify the correct info.

[MasterAtom]

In Houston, I can just send an email to the 911 center helpdesk with info they requested I send. Then they reply back to advise if we can do the test or not. Then when I call just tell the dispatcher this is a test call, verify the address they see.

They get a little upset when you just call without scheduling. Not sure if all 911 systems are like this, but wouldnt hurt to find out if they do have any procedures like this in your area's.

-Adam

[mdesbiens]

911 Fun

I know this is kinda off topic, but I used to work for a Cellular Provider out here in Wyoming, I love it when the engineers end up getting the sector's for 911 provisioned wrong, and I call 911 on a sector to test the translation pattern from say, Uinta County, and I end up in Goshen clear on the other side of the state. The 911 dispatchers are normally pretty cool when we tell 'em we're testing a new cell site out, and normally are pretty inquisitive of how it all works but every once in a while you get a shithead operator that just makes life a living hell.

[TJF]

An engineer was just telling me a story today about testing a 911 with a VoIP system in a smaller town and he mentioned that the receptionist seemed almost disappointed that there was no emergency.