The 3 Types of 911 Call Routing Solutions

911… it’s the most important call a person may ever make. Your customers rely on you to stay connected, and when an emergency strikes that connectivity could become a lifeline. You can ensure that emergency services get to the right place every time by using Bandwidth to manage e911 for VoIP or Unified Commmunications.

We offer three main types of 911 Access services, as well as additional features geared toward providers of VoIP-based phone solutions. Your ideal 911 call routing solution depends on the type of services you offer and how your customers connect (whether static, nomadic, mobile, or even a little bit of each). Because we also run our own Voice and Messaging networks, you can simplify operations by turning to Bandwidth for all your IP communications services.

1) Standard Address Routing

Ideal for: Business VoIP service providers, home phone VoIP service providers, and SIP resellers (depending on client needs). This service supports nomadic requirements with the ability to store multiple addresses associated with a phone number.

Our “standard” 911 call routing is anything but ordinary. Built to ensure the highest quality and most reliable emergency services available, our Standard Address Routing is grounded in the most sophisticated (and easy-to-use) provisioning tools possible.

Our Standard Address Routing uses each caller’s registered location to route calls to the proper emergency call center or Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). We store all of our customers’ 911 location data in a comprehensive and secure database that you can access with either our easy-to-use 911 Dashboard or our market-leading API.

2) Coordinates Routing

Ideal for: Over-the-Top (OTT) mobile VoIP providers or IoT devices with mobile connectivity. This service is best for truly mobile users whose location is always changing and can’t be associated with one (or a just a few) address locations. This service may also be used as a back-up when a traditional address cannot be provided.

Bandwidth’s 911 Coordinates Routing makes it easy for app developers and others offering VoIP-based mobile connectivity to Bandwidth’s national 911 network with easy-to-use and secure APIs. Instead of pure address-based routing, Coordinates Routing utilizes an individual’s latitude and longitude coordinates such as those provided by the GPS unit in a mobile phone.

When a 911 call is placed, we dynamically assess the caller’s coordinates and compares those to our PSAP boundaries file—then we route that call directly to the proper PSAP. Know some PSAPs that won’t take coordinates? No worries! Our sophisticated reverse geocoding option can provide a physical address to them within seconds.

3) Dynamic Location Routing

Ideal for: Business VoIP providers and SIP resellers that market to campus environments where additional location information (like building name or office number) is helpful such as office campuses, universities, and hospitals.

Bandwidth’s Dynamic Location Routing is an ideal emergency solution for large environments where users are frequently moving about. The service uses PIDF-Lo (Presence Information Data Format Location Object), a standard that is used to represent an address/location in XML format. Put simply, that means we can route users’ 911 calls based on each call’s associated Wi-Fi hotspot instead of a single static address.

With Dynamic Location Routing, employees, students or doctors can freely move around a campus—and their 911 service will always be at the ready. That means emergency providers have more information at the time of the 911 call—down to the building, floor, and room from which a call is placed.