Accidental 911 Calls

[woffordscott]

Kari's Law....Since applying the necessary changes to allow direct 911 access, we have seen an increase in accidental calls to 911 from our users. In addition, we are seeing that they are not staying on the line to notify the operator that it was an accidental call. We are looking for ways to help reduce these accidental calls. I am thinking of one of the following:

1) Apply a pre-recorded message (something like “Please stay on the line while you are connected to 911”) just before the call is connected. That way, if the users did hang up during this message, the call is not routed out to 911.

2) Add a slight delay (maybe 3-4 seconds) before the system routes the call to the PSAP

Have you guys ran into this issue? And if so, what are you doing to reduce these 911 calls?

Thanks,

Scott

[skilambi]

Scott

There are many ways to solve this, one way is to use 8 as the steering code for PSTN calls. Then use two patterns 911 and 9911. In this case train end users that if they meant this to be a 911 call always dial 9911 and it's an immediate match and routed. On the other hand if they dialed 911 due to force of habit, there will be an inter digit time out due to overlapping pattern with 9911 and if you meant to call 911 call will be placed anyway and if you didn't, the call can be hung up before the inter digit time out expires.

This is just one way we handle this for our clients.

[keglass]

Scott,

I recommend you research this topic in the Cisco Support Community. You will find a number of posts pertaining to this subject with helpful information provided.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/

Kelli Glass

Moderator for Cisco Customer Communities

[Mike Gibbons]

Scott,

Like most of us the 911 issues always seem to crop up.  Many will tell you to remove the patterns and use different steering codes, place stickers on phones and increase user training.  I have nearly 400 locations, the local PSAPs were beginning to threaten fines for all of the mis-dialed calls.  Most of the mis-dialed calls had a similar format.  Someone would attempt to make an LD call and dial 911[2-9]XX[2-9]XXXXXX.  So the way I approached it was to create a route pattern of 911#! to match the example LD pattern.  I then set to Block this pattern "Unallocated Number".  I assume that if a user dials 9911 or 911 with no further digits that it is an emergency call and if they dial additional digits that it is a mis-dialed call.

So

911 , urgent priority not checked, select route list

9.911, urgent priority not checked, select route list

911#!, urgent priority not checked, Block this pattern

We use local route groups for out sites so we only needed 1 each of the route patterns.  I don't have exact numbers but based on the virtual absence of support cases complaining about 911 issues I would say it was very effective.

Mike

[woffordscott]

Thanks Mike. I believe this is a great way to go. Appreciate the feedback.

Scott

[cnuche]

Hi,

There is a reason why TAC prefers to change the external code access to something different than 9, in some areas, there could be legal implications for not immediately routing an emergency call, I'd suggest to contact your legal department, (TAC does not perform legal checks), to check if this could be an issue.

HTH.

Regards,

Christian Nuche

TAC UC Tech Lead.

[Mike Gibbons]

To follow up on Christians point I failed to mention that I have decreased the t302 timer.  I agree that waiting on the default 15000 msec would not be advisable.

Mike

[woffordscott]

Yeah agree. My T302 is set down to 6 seconds at the moment. Will probably drop to 4-5 max going this route.

Scott