June 3, 2002

Telecom providers offer hotels many options to handle emergency calls Properly handling emergency 911 calls can be a matter of life or death. The challenge of handling these calls efficiently is magnified by the huge size of some hotels and outdated equipment that might not answer the bell. There are two types of 911 notification systems, according to Nancy Pollock, executive director for the metropolitan 911 board that is responsible for 911 service to the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area.

Basic 911 service transmits only the voice of the caller without any data. The call is routed to a public safety answering point, and the public official has to get information orally from the caller. With E911, or enhanced 911 service, the location information and phone number are displayed, and the call is routed to the public safety answering point. The location information typically is a street address.

While there is no federal mandate that communities use E911 to better identify callers, some states and local jurisdictions have required it, said Pollock. But even with that requirement, how a 911 call from a hotel is handled depends largely on the hotel's equipment and personnel.

Just like homevertSpacer('lessThanP','/hotelmotel') Pollock said most people expect 911 to work the same way it does from home, no matter where they are. "It's the public's perception that it will work, but that's not the case in many places," she said. "It can be a rude awakening for people when it doesn't work." Pollock said that even with E911 systems in place, the data transmitted from an E911 call in a hotel is likely to be only the hotel's name and address. Trying to find the caller in a 2,000-room hotel given only the address could be like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack.

Telecom companies that serve the hotel industry said they understand this challenge and offer a number of tools to make sure 911 callers from hotels can be located and helped promptly.

"The NEC private branch exchange systems have emergency services and applications to meet all the demanding needs of the hospitality market for the protection of guests and staffs," said Jay Krauser, assistant general manager for the NEC corporate network group.

The company's E911 with attendant notification alerts the hospitality console operators that a guest has placed a 911 call. A variety of people on the property can be conferenced into the call and when they are, the guest's name and room number will be displayed on those people's consoles. As many as 100 stations can be run off the switch and up to 24 phones can conference together at once.

Software that comes with the Avaya Definity private branch exchange includes emergency alerting capabilities.

NEC's Sentry Application allows the operator or other designated staff person who gets a 911 call to dial a conference number that will connect wireless and stationary phones throughout the property, so each person can react to the call. Different codes can be used for medical, security and maintenance emergencies.

"In many cases, the hotel operator is not always aware of who is on duty," said Donna Dilley, product marketing manager for NEC America. "Sentry allows the operator to broadcast notification of the 911 call to predetermined lists of staff." Both of these applications can be used with NEC's NEAX 2400 IPX PBX.

Adding a layervertSpacer('lessThanP','/hotelmotel') Some telecom experts said not every hotel wants guests to be able to reach a public safety answering point by dialing 911.

"One large Las Vegas property wanted all 911 calls to be routed to hotel security, which would check the validity of the call before sending it out," said Ray Welch, a sales engineer at Hitachi Telecom. "Only that hotel's security department had the ability to call 911."

Welch said this was implemented after a large number of false 911 calls were made from the property to the local fire department. "They were going to start charging the hotel for false 911 calls," Welch said. The hotel has a large security force equipped with wireless phones that can respond more quickly than rescue services, he said.

We have seen a surprising number of 911 calls that are not emergencies," said Bill Garraty, applications specialist for Hitachi. Garraty said many hotels require guests to dial 9 for an outside line and 1 for long distance. By accidentally hitting the 9 and 1 twice, that could mistakenly dial 911.

Software solutionsvertSpacer('lessThanP','/hotelmotel') Hitachi upgraded its PBX, or switch, to handle 911 calls in the mid-1990s and recently improved its ability to handle 911 calls through the launch of its MAXimilian Suites software. The software notifies the hotel operator or attendant by giving an audible alarm with a distinctive ring and also prints out the call to the front-office printer.

"We can provide all this information, as well as room locations for responding to the emergency, without any additional equipment," Welch said. "The new software allows attendants and anybody else, either on or off the property, who have access to the network and a personal computer on their desk or pager in their pocket to be notified of the call."

combination of hardware and software provides 911 solutions to users of Mitel Networks PBXes. The company's on-site identification will notify which telephone in what room called 911 so hotel employees can handle the situation and prepare for the emergency responders.

"Pretty much all of our hospitality customers buy the E911 software package for the ability to do on-site notification of 911 calls," said Brent White, marketing manager for voice platforms at Mitel Networks. "Most properties route the calls immediately to 911 and have attendants handle it to make sure emergency responders know where to go. My impression is that the number of hotels that want to send the location of the room number to 911 is fairly small."

White said some older 911 systems didn't work well because the information wasn't available to hotels until the caller hung up, and 911 callers often are told to stay on the line until help arrives. "If a hotel's technology is from the 1970s or 1980s, there's a good chance that emergency medical services will walk in the front door and the hotel didn't even know they were called," he said.

Avaya Hospitality offers emergency alerting and crisis alerting with its hospitality PBXes. "We can pass along the caller's ID to the public safety answering position," said Marissa Russotto, director of product management, Avaya converged enterprise solutions. "We also can alert attending physicians-or anybody the hotel wants to notify-when a 911 call is placed from the property."

Russotto said the alerting capabilities are standard in Avaya's basic software package.