Bandwidth Inc., announced surpassing a key milestone of over 20 million 911 endpoints under management across the U.S. and Canada. The industry-disrupting 911 call routing provider, long known for delivering a comprehensive suite of highly-reliable emergency services solutions, has seen dramatic growth in recent years stemming from its full service support for new and complex E911 regulations like Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’s Act.
“The 911 endpoints registered on our network represent the lives and livelihood of millions of individuals within both businesses and communities that need fast, reliable access to emergency assistance,” said Nick Sgroi, Senior Vice President of Product and Network Strategy at Bandwidth. “In particular, our ability to help enterprises meet RAY BAUM’s Act requirements for popular softphone applications like Zoom Phone and Microsoft Teams has been a key driver for our emergency services growth in the past year. Bandwidth is helping CIOs answer an urgent and complicated question: how do we protect the safety of our employees while meeting regulatory compliance needs?”
Unified communications platforms now allow users to work and communicate from anywhere, but this added flexibility creates serious challenges when locating them during a 911 call. Prior to the dramatic COVID-19-related shift to remote work, the FCC mandated that enterprises must provide a dispatchable location with their 911 calls, which includes a civic address plus specific in-building location information such as room, floor, or suite to help locate callers. Solving this challenge for users who are frequently moving around a corporate network or are transitioning between work and home requires advanced emergency services capabilities such as those available in Bandwidth’s well-established E911 Dynamic Location Routing solution.
Bandwidth provides accurate E911 connectivity and a radically simplified approach to location management. As both a network operator and leading CPaaS provider, Bandwidth has been able to combine modern E911 tooling and automation with nationwide emergency services reach. Bandwidth’s advanced technology also supports emergency notifications for compliance with Kari’s Law, near-real time address validation and error correction to ensure location information is compatible with public safety standards, misdial protection, and the industry’s first “933” validation feature that reduces the distraction of test calls placed to public safety answering points (PSAPs).
With the recent acquisition of Voxbone, Bandwidth’s reach now extends emergency services to over 30 additional countries outside the U.S. and Canada. This expanded global presence opens up new opportunities to invest and develop the dynamic emergency location technologies still emerging within the highly-regulated UK and EU markets.
Continuously innovating, Bandwidth is one of only two providers able to support the native dynamic E911 feature within Microsoft Teams. Teams-enabled enterprises can accelerate their transition to the platform while also meeting the RAY BAUM’s Act dispatchable location requirements for fixed and non-fixed VoIP.
“Our customers trust that they can expand their business, meet complex regulations, and launch new communication solutions knowing that, with Bandwidth, 911 is fully supported,” said Adam Covati, Bandwidth’s Vice President of Research and Development, “but our commitment to innovating within the 911 community doesn’t end there. The devices and solutions we use to call for help are expanding and Bandwidth is actively involved in developing technologies that anticipate these trends so that users can also connect to emergency services within the applications and IoT devices that have become part of our daily lives.”
As evidence of this, the growth in recent years of home security, personal safety apps, and other connected devices led Bandwidth to develop its Emergency Calling API, a solution geared towards SaaS and application developers who want access to public safety but don’t otherwise need the cost and complexity of managing a complete telephony infrastructure. Technology innovators including the connected safety platform, Noonlight, are able to seamlessly connect their subscribers with emergency services.
To learn more about Bandwidth’s full suite of 911 solutions for enterprises, unified communications and business VoIP providers, and SaaS and application developers, visit bandwidth.com/911.
Image licensed by: Pixabay.com
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