[VoiceOps] Misrouting 911 Calls?

[Aaron C. de Bruyn]

Thanks again everyone.

I ended up going with bulkvs.com.
They answered the phone when I called, didn't have voicemail saying they
were out for Christmas and would be back 2 days ago, their API made it
pretty simple to load ~270 phone numbers in a matter of minutes, and the
'922' test number allowed offices to run around and verify their address
info was correct.

Comcast finally responded to the issue and corrected our info for the 900th
time.  The snippet of their response I found annoying was: "if any changes
are made to the account it will automatically revert back to the original
name of --redacted--, which is the name the SIP account was set up under".

In my experience, any change to the account doesn't just affect the "name",
it also resets all the PSAP information back to the location of their
SIP/EDI install.  Anyways, that won't be a problem in ~18 months when we
ditch their incompetent service.

-A

On Tue, Jan 4, 2022 at 3:58 PM Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron at heyaaron.com> wrote:

> Thanks to everyone who responded both on and off-list.
> I think I'm going to go with a 3rd-party provider for routing 911 calls
> and just count down the months until they can ditch Comcast.
>
> -A
>
> On Tue, Jan 4, 2022 at 10:30 AM Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron at heyaaron.com>
> wrote:
>
>> One of my clients has a large SIP trunk with Comcast based out of
>> Washington State.
>>
>> They have all their offices across Oregon and Washington hooked into a
>> FreePBX phone server that is attached to the Comcast SIP trunk.
>>
>> 911 calls *constantly* get misrouted to the local PSAP where the SIP
>> trunk lives.
>>
>> I must have called Comcast 30 times over the last few years to try and
>> get this addressed, but Comcast flat-out refuses to fix the issue.
>>
>> The short answer is that Comcast refuses to fix it.  In some (but not
>> all) cases, our phone numbers are RCF'd numbers, so they don't
>> actually exist on the trunk...and Comcast forcibly re-writes them to our
>> 'main' number...and then routes the 911 call incorrectly.  In other cases,
>> we have provided Comcast with the e911 information, they say it's updated,
>> and then we find out months later (when an office dials 911 during an
>> emergency) that it's still not correct.
>>
>> Not only does this affect 911 calls, but also customers who get the
>> re-written caller ID and have no idea which office called them.
>>
>> The "easy" solution is to ditch Comcast and move to a provider that
>> doesn't play the RCF and caller-ID-rewrite games.  Unfortunately my client
>> is locked into their Comcast contract for another ~18 months.  Early
>> termination would incur a ~$35,000 bill.
>>
>> Is there a list of PSAP numbers somewhere so I can set up an internal
>> redirect to the PSAP 10-digit number?  I know those 10-digit numbers are
>> guarded like Fort Knox, so I'm betting this option isn't very realistic.
>>
>> Maybe a separate service provider that can just handle 911 calls without
>> "owning" my client's phone numbers?
>>
>> Any other thoughts on how I can route around Comcast brain damage?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> -A
>>
>
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