4 Key Features of a VoWiFi 911 Solution

By: Marcus Andronici, Principal Sales Engineer

Handset technology has evolved to the point that WiFi calling can often be a seamless experience for your users (on WiFi-enabled devices). For competitive carriers, VoWiFi is a means to:

• Move calls off your networks to alleviate data/network demands.
• Deliver differentiated services to your subscribers and reduce subscriber churn.
• Provide coverage when and where wireless calls aren’t possible i.e., indoor environments where coverage can be limited.
• Expand your carrier footprint while reducing roaming costs, thus eliminating the need to put additional roaming agreements in place.

What are the critical components of a 911 solution for VoWiFi that carriers need to consider as they prepare their deployments? I’ll dig into some of these 911 features in more detail in an upcoming post, but for now, my list of essentials include:

1. A VoIP Positioning Center (VPC) or other platform capable of making routing decisions based on subscriber-provisioned location or dynamically provided location.
2. A provisioning platform leveraging public safety-class data (MSAG) to validate against and to store the location information.
3. Integration with a public safety spatial boundary database that is continuously updated so that routing decisions are based on the most recent jurisdictional information available.
4. A dynamic ALI or a reference database that can be queried by the PSAP at the time of the call for either the pre-provisioned address (within a proximity threshold) or the latitude/longitude (outside of a proximity threshold).

Next week, I’ll share some of my recommendations for VoWiFi 911 user set up and provisioning.

To learn even more about 911 and VoWiFi, join our Customer Team Director, Jerry Wilke, at CCA’s 2017 Annual Convention in Fort Worth later this month. He’ll be speaking on Wednesday, October 25 at 2:30 p.m. and will be in booth #303 to answer your questions about 911.