Franz Kafka once said, “It’s better to have and not need, than to need, and not have.” Consider this when you’re choosing a VoIP service, and be sure that the provider you decide on has Enhanced 911, or “e-911.” While we certainly hope you will never need to use this feature, we are happy to provide this to ensure safe and effective solutions in an emergency.

What is e-911?

Enhanced 911 takes your emergency calls, and associates your device with a physical location. The physical location will guarantee that emergency calls are are relayed to the appropriate Public Safety Access Point, and routed to the necessary emergency services.

Why is Enhanced 911 important?

The biggest issue with most VoIP services in an emergency is that your location information is not shared with the services you will call, and this can be dire during a life or death situation. By having Enhanced 911, your numbers and locations are registered to the appropriate databases, which will help the Public Safety Access dispatch the correct information to emergency services upon request. This means that they will be able to find you when you need it most.

How does e-911 work?

Should an emergency occur, you will have peace of mind knowing that FluentStream has built-in Enhanced 911, which will help get you in touch with the right emergency service. But how does it work?

• Step 1: A 911 call is placed from your device.
• Step 2: Our Enhanced 911 associates your device to a physical address, including room-level location accuracy.
• Step 3: Your 911 call is routed to the appropriate public safety access points.
• Step 4: Those emergency services are able to locate you using the location information, and get you the help you need when you need it most.

Who Needs Enhanced 911?

We feel that everyone should have access to Enhanced 911, especially businesses. Here are just a few use cases that we feel should absolutely have this service.

• Schools and Universities: Whether you are a public school system or a large university, there’s a need for a secure phone system that can save anyone in an emergency. With so many access-points that could need a phone, a school or university can be a tricky place to locate an issue. That is why having Enhanced 911 is critical if your school using a VoIP service. It will help emergency response services find the exact location, down to the room the call was placed from.

• Office Buildings: With many office buildings being broken up into multiple businesses, your VoIP provider knowing your exact location is important, especially in an emergency. If your company owns the entire building with multiple phone lines, it is also useful for the same purpose. Having Enhanced 911 for your business or office building is a great way to ensure that when something happens, you will be able to get the help that you need.

• Hospitals: The bigger the area your business phone system has to spread, the more access points there could be when calling for help. This is especially true for hospitals, which have many floors and buildings on their campuses. Emergency 911 can help get patients and staff the help they need a lot faster by allowing emergency responders to zero in on the exact location the distress call was placed from.

Enhanced 911 is a feature that Fluentstream offers clients, but we really hope you never need to use it. However, if something terrible does happen, we hope you have a business phone system with e-911. Enhanced 911 is just one of over  110 features that we offer. Be sure to look through all of the features that make our service unique, and see why switching to FluentStream as your business phone service provider is the right choice.