Protecting employees and other stakeholders is an important responsibility of business leaders. By migrating communications to the cloud, enterprises can access an abundance of communications tools that improve the way their employees interact with each other and how they interact with their customers. Cloud-based telecom tools also provide features that enable organizations to deploy enhanced safety measures, so their employees have access to emergency services, no matter where they are working from.
Emergency communications have seen drastic improvements since the first 911 call was placed back in 1968. E911 — or enhanced 911 — services help make this a reality and are vital to a company’s overall business health. E911 services dispatch emergency calls to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) and pinpoint the precise location of where a call is originating from making it easier for first responders to find and help the caller in an emergency.
Flowroute offers emergency services connectivity and keeps response communications and customer safety needs at the forefront of our offerings. We want to help make sure you and your employees are prepared for anything.
For a limited time, we will waive the E911 subscription fee for every U.S. and Canada phone number (DID) that has not been previously enabled with E911 connectivity, including new and ported-in phone numbers. This will provide Emergency Routing Service (ERS) with automated E911 call routing so that when you or your users dial 9-1-1, you are connected quickly and accurately to the nearest PSAP. This also means that calls made to 9-1-1 from phone numbers on Intrado’s Flowroute platform (that are not setup with 9-1-1 connectivity) will still be able to reach emergency services in the moments that matter most.
ERS removes the need to install local gateways and dedicated 9-1-1 trunks for each office location, resulting in significant cost savings and reduced administrative and management overhead. Removing the need to install local gateways is also a helpful feature as many employees are working remotely.
Calls without a defined location in the Intrado Emergency Service Database are first connected to Intrado’s Emergency Call Response Center (ECRC) to identify the caller’s location before being connected to the PSAP in their area.
Flowroute is on the forefront of enabling 9-1-1 access ahead of newer FCC rules taking effect, including those that will require outbound VoIP providers to:
- Provide 9-1-1 service to all customers as a standard, mandatory feature. VoIP providers may not allow customers to “opt-out” of 9-1-1 service.
- Secure a customer’s physical location prior to service activation and provide one or more simple ways for customers to update the location they have registered with the provider.
- Transmit all 9-1-1 calls, as well as a callback number and the caller’s registered physical location, to the appropriate PSAP.
- Ensure all 9-1-1 calls are routed to the appropriate PSAP in areas where emergency service providers are not capable of receiving or processing the caller’s location information or call back number.
A connection fee of $95 per each call made to 9-1-1 for the use of the Emergency Call Response Center will apply only to phone numbers without a defined location. Customers can avoid the connection fee by subscribing to 9-1-1 services and providing an address for each of the phone numbers in the Flowroute Portal or via the Flowroute API.
With ERS, Flowroute customers will reach more than 6,000 PSAPs across North America, eliminate the need for maintaining emergency location databases, achieve compliance with federal and state regulations and gain backup 9-1-1 support through Intrado’s ECRC.
Customers who take advantage of Flowroute’s E911 subscription offer for Flowroute DIDs not previously enabled will be better protecting their employees in the event of emergency and gaining a robust emergency service for their business.
