Avaya is a relatively new player in the public safety space, but is intent on disrupting it, and to this end has unveiled a next-gen 911 solution.
Mark Fletcher, Chief Architect for Worldwide Public Safety Solutions at Avaya
AUSTIN – Avaya has announced the availability of what the company is terming new and unprecedented life-saving device location reporting capabilities within Avaya communications solutions for emergency response management. The reference case study announced is American, and the new SENTRY NG911 technology is enabled for the U.S. Emergency Network, but it will be available in Canada and to Canadian partners as well. The announcement was made at the Avaya Engage event here.
Avaya really began a push into the public safety space in the last two years, finding ways to utilize their Avaya Aura technology in this market.
“What we are doing here is adapting technology that we have used in enterprise use cases to the public safety market,” said ,” said Mark Fletcher, Chief Architect for Worldwide Public Safety Solutions at Avaya “This has not been a primary market for us, but it is an area we have decided we will absolutely disrupt with new technology. Public safety hasn’t considered these kinds of applications. The typical players in public safety barely know how to route a phone call – which is something that we practically invented. It gives us a huge advantage in the public safety marketplace.”
The case study announced provides location discovery for devices and places the data into a U.S. Next Generation 911 (NG911) repository. There it becomes easily available to first-responders, helping enable them to more accurately locate the position of the caller’s device as well as access additional critical information when calls are made from an Avaya communications system.
“This was the first Next-Gen 911 call, from our customer, Shelby County Tennessee, using an Avaya Aura 7 system,” Fletcher said. “A 911 call provided them with the voice location and floor plan relating to the caller device.” Fletcher noted that this uses the company who provide location services for Android and Apple.
“It emulated the functionality without actually having a Next-Gen 911 network in place,” Fletcher said. He emphasized the importance of this, that it will accelerate the rate of adoption of Next Gen 911, which he believes could very well have 100 per cent market penetration by June.
“Public safety wants to do a better job, and this will dynamically change things,” Fletcher indicated. “You almost don’t need to deploy a next-gen network any more, because people accept having their traffic on the internet. The QOS is there. Organizations won’t need to build their own network. They will ask ‘why are we spending that money when it works on the Internet.’”
Avaya communications solutions deployed with SENTRY NG911 are available now today for organizations of all sizes, and will be fully available to channel partners. While the system was originally designed for the U.S., Fletcher said that it will work in Canada.
“Our public safety initiative last year was more focused on the U.S., but this year is also focused on Canada, although we haven’t done a pilot there like we have in the U.S.,” he stated. “We are very active in Canada.”
Fletcher indicated however, that Canada’s huge metros might not be the best place to break this kind of solution in.
“I think in Canada, you have to find the right place– on the outskirts a little bit,” he said.
