Solution to Avoid 911 misdialed calls?

[bcarlson11]

Since using Call Manager and Unity Connect, we are encountering a number of 911 misdials. Is there any reason why we can't completely eliminate using 9 in our dial plan rules to get an outside line? We only have 200 inside 4 digit extensions, none starting with 9.

Why not have dial plan rules that say 1(2-9)xxxxxxxxx and then exceptions for international, toll-free, 411, 911, etc. Is there a requirement in dial plans to use a specific digit to route to the PSTN (PRI circuit)?

 

[VoIPGuyNSC]

Not at all. You are free to use whichever route patterns that you wish. There is no specific requirement to use a pattern for outside access. It is done for the sake of making your dialing patterns easier to build and for the plain reason that its been done so much in the past. But you have to be careful. Make sure that none of your internal extensions could possibly match the first four digits of a valid PSTN telephone number. Keep in mind that area codes always start with the digits 2-9 and exchange prefixes always start with the digits 2-9.

So that begs the question, how are you getting 911 misdials? 9 for the outside line, and 1 for the international code for the US. There are no area codes starting with 1.

John Lever
Telecommunications
Richland School District Two

 

[bcarlson11]

Valid question on misdials. It all boils down to either sloppy dialing or senior moments - forgetting they already dialed the 1. There is nothing wrong with Call Manager - just human error causing the misdials.

We are in the Chicago area, so with area code overlays everyone has to dial 1 to get anywhere. To avoid 911 misdials even though there is sloppy dialing, my thought is to eliminate the 9 but require the 1 to be dialed plus the number. If we also eliminated dialing the 1 and then appended it to the dial string, there is a possibility that misdials to areas code 910 or 912 could become inadvertent calls to 911.

Eliminating needing to dial 9 from deskphones would also make dialing universal from deskphones, fax machines(direct outside POTS lines) and cellphones (even though I know you don't need to dial the 1 from a cellphone - but it works anyway).

 

[Maugwa]

When our system was first set up the consultant actually had a route 911 along with a route 9.911. I got rid of the 911 route and our false calls stopped. We thought it was callmanager and we did go the route to change from 9 to 7, but we have some of our inside lines (DID) that began with 7 and when you tried to dial those extension, the call would not go through.

I'd first send you to look at your route
Route Plan -> Route/Hunt -> Route Patterns
Look at your plans and see if you may have two patterns, 911 and 9.911. Get rid of the 911 and you should be good to go or change it to 9.911 and notify your folks that they will have to dial 9911 in case of an emergency instead of just 911.

Hope this get's you started or at least looking in the right direction.

Chad

 

[bcarlson11]

Thanks for the tip. Yes, we have both dial plan rules of 911 and 9.911. Doesn't eliminating 911 as a valid rule violate E911 laws/regulations though?

Since we have no extensions starting with 8 or 9, I don't believe we will have a conflict of how to process the call as inside or outside.

 

[Maugwa]

I would think you should be within regulations as long as you have your DN's external phone number mask filed in with your company's local phone number or DID number. The E911 is just basically for locating where the call originated from (Address of Call).

 

[pndscm]

Be very careful eliminating the 911 Route Pattern. While you can broadcast internally that everyone must dial 911, visitors will not know that. Also in an emergency situation, people will forget and dial 911 anyway.
You could route 911 calls to Unity where they get a message saying if this is an Emergency stay on the line and then they get transferred to 911 immediately or they can hang up during the recording.

 

[jneiberger]

If you aren't using them for something else, you could always use * or # as your access code for outside lines.

 

[Maugwa]

Yeah, it's a tricky situation. We made sure to post the number everywhere near a phone just in case that should arise. If you're not using another number in your route plan then you should not have a problem changing the 9 to that number. In your route plan, anything that has a 9. in front is what you will change to your new number.

Unfortunately, the people in my organization are relentless to change and when you start them out using 9, which was hard enough since we changed from a phone system that had direct dial out, then 2 weeks later change it to 7 on them and then change it again back to 9 a couple weeks after that, they really begin to balk. We could have changed it to another number but who knows when they would want to start using another extension seperate from what we're already using for something else.