911 Hangup Problem

[underwod]

We are having a problem at our site with users accidently dialing 911 and hanging up. Our emergency services are not happy with us. We are able to find the calls but, I am hoping someone out there has found a way to stop this from happening. I'm thinking there should be a way to verify the caller really wants to make this call before it goes out to the PSAP. Maybe routing the call to a recording that requests you press a number to proceed? We are running CallManger 7.0. The calls are routing through our PRI which is managed through MGCP.
Any ideas?
Thanks for any suggestions,

 

[jeter]

Change the access from 9 to 8. So when someone dials 911 you know it to be true...

Go Army!
Tek-TIP Member 19,650

 

[Telecomlady]

We did the same thing and changed to 8. It cut down on alot of calls

 

[underwod]

Thanks so much for the suggestion. We have considered this but, it ties up using all numbers that begin with either 8 or 9 for internal numbers. We really don't want to tie up that many available numbers.
What we have are 2 route patterns for 911 (9.911 and 911). I have taken the Urgent Priority off the 911 pattern and changed the default interdigit timeout to 5 seconds. This gives callers who accidently dial 911 time to hang up before the call goes to the PSAP and yet doesn't delay the call too long if it is a real emergency. Hopefully this will help.
Thanks

 

[JayShoup]

Be careful intercepting 911 calls. There are lots of legal issues.
If you “break” a 911 call, or otherwise make a 911 call vulnerable to delays, and someone gets hurt, or worse killed because of it. Not only will you feel really BAD, but you and you company may get sued. I recently read a newspaper article of someone getting sued over a 911 issues like this.

We have had the same issues, in our case we are a large school corporation with multiple sites. On our “old” Hicom 300 system we used SMDR data to monitor the occurrence of 911 calls. Then, based on the SMDR (CDR) data notified each school main office via email, SMS message, as well as network screen pop ups. We wrote the SMDR monitoring software ourselves and it worked quite well.

Since we are in the process of moving all our phones to the new CUCM (and CUCM does not have an SMDR port) we have purchased IpSessions by IpCelerate. That system monitors all phones for a 911 dialing. It then uses email, SMS, and screen pop ups (on both computers and IP Phones) to notify key staff. These “key” staff persons then call the phone number (extension) back to determine if it was a “real” 911 call.

Our system also sends an email to the local PSAP so that emergency services know the exact extension location (read: room number, building, and name assignment, as well as extension number, special “comments”, etc.). The PSAP appreciates this information as it is far superior to what ANI delivers.

Our experience suggests that once your staff begins to realize that 911 calls are monitored and they can not hide by just hanging up, the “volume” of the inadvertent calls dramatically reduces.

 

[underwod]

Thank you so much for your response. In the past we have looked into a 3rd party software for this purpose but, it was not deemed cost effective. I will look into the software you are using to see if it is better. We are a public school system and finances are always tight.
Thanks again.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Why not build a 911 accidental misdial filter? Cisco is adamant that anything you can do in a competitor's PBX they can meet or beat, so the following should be doable.

I can't tell you how to do this on the CM, but in competing (Legacy) phone systems we would build 10 system speedcall numbers, i.e., 9110, 9111, 9112, 9113, 9114, etc. through 9119 and send them all straight to a voice mail menu tree that announces to the caller, "You appear to have accidently dialed nine-one-one. - If you have an emergency and need the police, fire department or an ambulance, press one. If you are trying to reach some other number, please hang up and try your call again."

If the caller presses <1> (and no one ever does) the call is immediately transferred to 9-1-1-#

This [u[STOPPED[/u] all of our accidental 911 misdials dead in their tracks.

Cisco, in their infinite wisdom, renamed all the legacy terms, so I'm uncertain what moniker or acronym they've given to the interdigit timer, but I'm reasonably sire the CM has one. If so, squeeze this down to 5 seconds (no shorter) to prevent legitimate (real) 911 calls from being excessively delayed.

 

[underwod]

You hit it right on the money! We did exactly that. I increased the interdigit timeout to 5 seconds and made sure there was a "competing" route pattern. I also had to take the check mark out of priority for the 911 route pattern. T We tested it with the PSAP and they did not receive the call if the person immediately hung up. It does create a little anxiety in the case of a real 911 call but, we have notified the users in that building to expect a slight delay. And it is not that much of a delay. Thanks so much for your suggestion!

 

[JayShoup]

No disrespect intended, but IT people always forget about that guy named Murphy. I don't know about you, but delaying or intercepting a 911 call scares the begeezees out of me. What happens if your voicemail system locks up, crashes, etc. Now a REAL 911 call cannot go through to the PSAP because of a totally unrelated piece of equipmet. Try to justify this in court and the lawyers (for the dead guys wife and children's) will love you. They and their lawyer get to retire to the Bahamas, you and your boss get to go home without jobs, while your company files bankruptsy. There are already so many things that can go wrong, why increase the number of failure points. The PSAP is used to 911 hangups, they get them all the time. 911 hangups are not life threatening. 911 intercepts that fail very well could be. Like I always tell my kids. It does not matter if you fall from the bridge, or jump from the bridge. When you hit the ground below the results are the same! Better to tac the extension on to the outbound ANI/Caller ID and let the PSAP deal with it. If you use AT&T they have a PBX 911 solution that forwards the extension number to the PSAP so the PSAP can call back. If I am not mistaken I think CM has the ability to reroute an inbound POTS on the POTS that made the 911, back to the last extension that sent the 911. I seem to recall this topic of discussion with CM guru. Anything is better (in my opinion) then intercepting a 911 call. Just my 2 cents.

Network Administrator - Communications & Security Services
Merrillville Commuity School Corp.
276 East 68th Place
Merrillville, IN 46910

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

As convifured, ALL EXTERNAL CALLS from behind the PBX and destined for the public network REQUIRE that the caller prepend a leading digit "9" to those calls. This dialing the PSAP originally required "9-911" and life was good.

Along came our Legal Department and in their infinite wisdom, DEMANDED that we allow simply "911" to receive emergency call treatment. Fine except now you're swampped with accidental 911 misdials. Every time a user places a long distance call they are but one single slip of the finger from accidentally dialling 911. And it happens and happens and happens. On a fair sized system (2000 users) we were experiencing an average of 5 to 10 accidental 911 misdials per week. We were finally threatened with a fine: "Fix it or get a $500 fine for every future misdial"

The 911 accidental misdial trap, using 10 speedcall entries and a 5-second interval on the interdigit timer FIXED the problem. Since implementing it our 911 misdial incidence has dropped from 5~10 per week down to 1 or 2 per year.

We combined this with an education program to educate our users about how (and when/under what circumstances) to call 911 and what to expect if they dial only 9-1-1 versus 9-911.

The educational efforts have been very well received by everyone.



Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member

 

[whykap]

Apart of changing your access code from 9 to another digit or intercepting the 911 call with a message which would both help, another thing that helps is user training.

Train the users to:
If you accidentally dial 911, stay on the line identify yourself and explain that you misdialed. If police still chooses to dispatch will not affect your status with them.

If you accidentally dial 911 and hung up before you talk cause you panicked, call back and tell them that you just dialed accidentally and then hung up accidentally.

Eventually the police dept will start chatging you a dispatch fee for hung up calls, for using public reaources for no reason. In some busy metro areas it can be up to $1000 per call.

Lots of legal issues with intercepting a call. What if the user is having a heart attack. dials 911 and drops uncontious, while the system is waiting for them to enter the digit? Call never goes through, person dies, you have to live with it cause you programmed it and also looking for a new job while the persons family sues you.

What if the voice mail fails and never intercepts the call, therefore caller gets a busy? See answer above.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Your correct in that "TRAINING" is the ultimate answer, but will still never solve the 911 accidental misdial problem in a large corporate office with a 9+ external dial plan.

In our design:

A correctly dialed 911 call will always go through, unimpeded.
A correctly dialed 9-911 call will always go through, unimpeded.

A 9-1-1-X call will intercept but by design will still default-out to the PSAP if there is no subsequent user input, even though there is no legal requirement that we complete the call.

Strictly from a legal perspective, there is NO LEGAL REQUIREMENT to complete a misdialed call, period. Both 911 and 9-911 work. If the caller cannot accurately dial 911 or 9-911 the result of a misdial is not our liability. (so sayeth our legal dept)

Facing stiff fines from the PSAP, our legal dept. agreed this was an acceptable fix while still meeting "letter of the law" requirement.


Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member