A Child Died Dialing 911

[00:00:00] Max Clark: Fletch, paint me,

you

you know, paint me a picture. Give me, you know,

gimme some

some

backstory, some background, and, and let's just get into it.

[00:00:06] Mark J: Okay, so I'm Mark Fletcher.

I'm Vice President of Public Safety Solutions at 9 1, 1 and four. Um, known in the industry as Fletch, um, which to me is a great, cool nickname. I never had one as a kid. Always wanted one. And thank you Chubby Chase for coming out with that in the movies. Um. But, uh, I've been involved in public safety for the bulk of my career.

Uh, when I graduated high school back in the 19 hundreds, um, you know, I was a police dispatcher and a special officer on the road in New Jersey, and I did that for about five years. But my core passion was it and technology, you know, we're in the eighties here and the internet really didn't exist at a public level, but I saw it coming and I wanted to get into computers.

So in about 85 or so, I pur started to pursue an IT career that immediately draw me, drew [00:01:00] me back into the public safety marketplace because Dr. Fletch, you know, you know, public safety go deal with this customer that's got this

problem. I'm like, oh yeah, sure I understand it. And slowly that evolved into voice technologies and very quickly it evolved into.

9 1 1 and accessing 9 1 1. And I realized there was a problem in PBX's. We had to dial nine for an outside line, which was ridiculous. I had a customer that had a fax machine on the PBX and they're like, why do I have to dial nine on this PBX? Can't you make it do that automatically? And I went through and I looked at the Nortel system.

I'm like, yeah, we can make that happen for that. And so I did that and I thought about it. Well, you know, this is a problem for everybody. So I started doing things in the PBX that would allow direct access to 9 1 1 career moves on. I'm working for Nortel. [00:02:00] I become a product manager over there. I started to build this as a feature.

Why do we have to go in and configure this? Come on. And, uh, you know, when, when Nortel got sold off to Avaya, I took on a similar role at Avaya and, uh, was there for nine years. And, uh, again, built up that public safety awareness within the product line. Um, I read in the newspaper one day, or on, on the newspaper, I, I came across my Google alerts one day about this poor woman in Marshall, Texas who died in a hotel.

Her name was Kari Hunt. Um, her husband, who she was meeting at the hotel, her estranged husband had pulled her into the bathroom, started stabbing her 29 times, her 9-year-old, and other two other kids were in the room, and her youngest, who was nine at the time, went over to the phone, dialed 9 1 1 It didn't [00:03:00] work. She dialed it again, it didn't work. And again and again, four times. Never got through because she never dialed 9 9 1 1. And this came out at the police interview later that evening, uh, with her grandfather carrie's father, right? And, uh, he said, what do you mean nine for 9 1 1? He goes back to the hotel.

Sure enough, that was a situation. And he says, I'm gonna write a law to fix this. I'm gonna get a hundred signatures. And he went out and he started talking to people. I saw the, the, uh, the petition online in my Google alerts. I read it and I knew exactly what happened. And I called him up, proud East Texas

guy. Hey, how you doing? I'm, I'm fledged from New Jersey. I want fix your 9 1 1 problem. And he's like, okay, Yankee, you know, what kind of money grab are you looking for? I said, I'm not look looking for anything. I just wanna fix this problem. I have the right contacts with the right people. [00:04:00] I will get you in front of somebody in Washington.

And I did. I wrote letters and reached out to contacts and in, within a month, within, this happened in December of 2014 or 2013, January of 2014, I'm down at the FCC in Commissioner Pie's office explaining this problem. He's got his whole staff in there, head legal advisor, who's Brendan Carr at the time.

Uh, grilled me, grilled the crap outta me. I had all the answers and, um, ended up being going through Congress and the house and rewrites of the law and all of this. Um, zoom forward to 2018. We get it outta Congress. It's on the president's desk waiting to get signed. I got 10 days to get it signed before it's an [00:05:00] automatic veto.

Commissioner Pi is now chairman of the FCC and his head legal guy, Brenda Carr, is now a commissioner at the FCC. So I got a lot of friends, find myself in the Oval Office on the 14th of, or the 16th of February, 2018. 50 years to the minute, two o'clock in the afternoon of the very first nine one one call ever made at Ville, Alabama.

I'm in the Oval Office with President Trump and my law on his desk in front of him, and out comes the pen and this is a good law. Kari's Law became the law of the land.

[00:05:51] Max Clark: So, So,

there's there's two that have come into. Well,

well,

there's,

there's three, but the two that hit basically at the same time that are big deals were Kari's

law on Ray [00:06:00] Baum's Act.

right?

[00:06:00] Mark J: Ray Baum's Act added. So I didn't have any location information. What I learned, because I, I was stupid. I didn't know the law. I didn't, I, you know, I, I'm just a bill. I watched that when I was a kid, but beyond that, I really didn't know how this congressional lawmaking process worked. I'm from New Jersey.

No, I ain't gonna do that. Come on, this is too easy. Let's just do this. You can't do that. Well, I'm gonna try. Well, I tried and I did. So I didn't go through all the BS, but I kept the law simple. Kerry's law was about access. You gotta be able to dial 9 1 1 to get 9 1 1.

And I knew if I complicated the law any further, because I'd already been working on this technology, that this was gonna get me 10, 15 years, never gonna go anywhere.

So I left all of that stuff out. I. Of course, other people came in with Ray Bombs Act and Section 5 0 6, Ray Baums Act was this thick, it was a, you know, it was a bill [00:07:00] that included all the public safety stuff. Ray Bombs was literally a page and a half out of a thousand page document, but they added what was called Dispatchable location.

And working with the FCCI actually wrote the definition of what a dispatchable location is because they left that out. So, very familiar with that. What's the third one? Well, Alyssa's Law came in after that, which is, uh, panic buttons in schools. But, uh, those are the primary public safety bills.

[00:07:31] Max Clark: I

I don't, this is, this is, um,

being

being able to pick up a phone,

you

you know, in a traditional PBX environment, not having to dial nine or eight or whatever was code mm-hmm.

In an outside line. I mean, this is.

dialing

nine to get an outside line into the PBX is like 60-year-old concepts. Right.

it really

Get on, make

[00:07:48] Mark J: sure you're on the watts lines. Right.

[00:07:51] Max Clark: But,

um,

so

so there's, there's really, um, not every enterprise understands what this actually means and also [00:08:00] understands the legal requirement they have.

Yeah.

as a

As a result of these two laws Kari's

laws being able to dial 9 1 1 Yep. And Ray Bombs introduces location. Identifier.

Right.

And

some other requirements as well. Right. There's, there's a location identifier.

and you

You have, um, requirements to actually signal a security console of like 9 1 1.

[00:08:20] Mark J: Right? And that's an extension actually the, the onsite notification piece.

I had a fight like hell for this, this almost derailed the law, but it was, Carey's law actually requires onsite notification or notification to someone within the network that can react and understand the call that happened. Ray bombs strengthen that by saying, in addition to that onsite notification, whatever that is, also has to go to public safety.

[00:08:50] Max Clark: Now

this

creates an interesting thing and so let's,

let's talk

talk about enterprises specifically. Mm-hmm.

public

Forget public safety. We'll talk, we'll, we'll [00:09:00] come back to that.

Um,

A

a lot of times in the corporate environment there's this assumption of like, oh, somebody else is taking care of this for us,

Oh, we

we

have this, we have this box.

This box is gonna take care of it.

us. Or

[00:09:12] Mark J: Well, they're told that. They're told that.

[00:09:14] Max Clark: Or now

Now we have this cloud service. This cloud service is taken care

[00:09:16] Mark J: of. Mm-hmm.

[00:09:17] Max Clark: You

You know,

that's

that's not always the case, is it?

[00:09:19] Mark J: Well, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of like it's in there, don't worry about it. You like this? Um, so 9 1 1 is, they're not lying.

9 1 1 is in there. They're taking care of it, but they're not taking care of the use cases. Yes. Some basic level of what they've interpreted as 9 1 1 may or may not be there. However, a usable faction of that typically doesn't really exist. I mean, if you look at it and you pull it apart and say, I'm gonna have an emergency, I'm gonna dial this.

Am I gonna get a reasonable response quickly? And that's [00:10:00] where the crapshoot comes into play, unfortunately.

[00:10:03] Max Clark: And you

have different, um, and then you get into a situation now where

ignorance is

is not

an

an excuse.

Especially, I

I mean, people dialing 9 1 1.

there's

There's some sort of, you know,

[00:10:16] Mark J: assumed level of service is the legal

term.

[00:10:18] Max Clark: Yeah, it's, but I mean, it's like

you're

you're not dialing 9 1 1 because, well, you shouldn't be dialing 9 1 1 because you're looking for the time, right? Like it's, there's, there's an implied emergency

that's

life. The right mean,

you

you know, for this service.

[00:10:32] Mark J: That's the, that's the idea.

But ask, ask, the 9 1 1 dispatchers.

That doesn't always happen.

[00:10:36] Max Clark: It

[00:10:37] Mark J: It doesn't always happen,

[00:10:38] Max Clark: you know,

[00:10:38] Mark J: you know, for the, for the

[00:10:38] Max Clark: majority of the time. Right. You know, that's the assumption. So,

you know,

you know, if you're in a hospitality service and, and you have a hotel and somebody, I mean, now at this point, if somebody's in your, your property and they dial 9 1 1 and they can't get an outside line, or your, your phone system isn't configured properly or it's not signaling that you're on,

you

you know, the 10th floor

northwest

corner room, you know, 10 25,

[00:11:00] um,

that

creates problems for you.

[00:11:03] Mark J: Absolutely. And, and it's an, it's assumed that 9 1 1 knows where you are

because you're thinking from a home perspective. I've got a phone number, it's got an address. My home is, you know, whatever, couple thousand square feet, if you're lucky. Yeah. I'm gonna find you. You're in the bedroom, bathroom, basement, kitchen, whatever,

[00:11:21] Max Clark: Right?

[00:11:22] Mark J: but 5 25, you know, grand Avenue and a 15 story hotel with, you know, however many hundreds of hotel rooms.

Good, golly, good luck finding somebody, because that was the question I first asked is, well, how does the information travel from the originating system or network? How does that get to nine one one? I'm making a phone call. You know, the, the internet barely exists for data to travel. How does this old fashioned telephone send that information?

Most people don't even understand that or even think about that. And the [00:12:00] answer to that is very simple. If I call United Airlines right now, they'll know it's me calling and they'll know that I'm flying to Austin on Tuesday. How do they know that? My cell phone number,

because it matches with the account and their, you know, million and a half dollar, you know, Avaya or Cisco or nor Nortel telephone system and contact center tells them that it all gets it from the caller id.

9 1 1 works the same way. So if I've got a hotel with a thousand hotel rooms, I better have a thousand DID numbers, direct numbers, so each one can have its own location record. That's not efficient, it's not affordable, it's not manageable.

[00:12:44] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:45] Mark J: You're gonna get 5 25 Grand Avenue and that's it

[00:12:47] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:48] Mark J: and that's a problem.

[00:12:52] Max Clark: Um,

Um.

where do I want to go with this? But

from an enterprise.

[00:12:58] Mark J: there's a fix on the, on the horizon, [00:13:00]

and that's next generation 9 1 1.

[00:13:02] Max Clark: Okay, So

so let's, I mean, okay, let's talk through the,

the

the platforms of 9 1 1 then, right? Because you start with, with the original,

you

you know, 9 1 1 basic nine one

[00:13:11] Mark J: one, we call it. Yeah,

[00:13:12] Max Clark: Yeah,

yeah. Which assumed that you had like some sort of analog or t DM service that was going through the phone company and there was a physical line that was going to a location.

And so if you dial 9 1 1

and you hit your central office or,

and

and that central office could connect to the PEACE app, and it was like, okay, you're on this line, there's a, there's a very simple subscriber,

you

you move forward a little bit and you get into digital services and now you have, you know, PRI lines.

Mm-hmm. And then that turns into sip lines.

And

and

then we have this concept of E 9 1 1 that comes out.

[00:13:40] Mark J: Well, E 9 1 1 actually. So just to

get the terms right Max.

[00:13:43] Max Clark: Yeah.

[00:13:43] Mark J: So E 9 1 1 was basically the calling line. Id making it to the Peace app. Which we call ECCs now, emergency Communication centers, but that's the call center application.

They get the caller id, they look up your billing record, and your billing [00:14:00] record says this is where the billing

goes. So that's where the line is installed. And that same basic functionality is in place today. You've got different ways of getting to the PSAP or ECC, and that's the sip, the PRI and all of this.

But at the end of the day, that calling line ID is the location indicator back to public safety. And most people don't realize that. And the problem is, is we've introduced mobility in our endpoints. I take my phone number with me

where I go.

[00:14:37] Max Clark: I was

I was just gonna get to that.

[00:14:38] Mark J: Yeah.

[00:14:39] Max Clark: Uh, so without getting into cell phones, let, let's,

let's,

let's table that for a second.

But let's talk about mobility from the standpoint of

soft

phones or.

I

I can use my phone at my house or I can use my phone. Sure.

How

How does an enterprise deal with this? Because, I mean, you know, most people assume

when

when I get into this conversation that, oh, if somebody's at their house, they're not gonna use [00:15:00] their desk soft phone or their corporate line to call 9 1 1.

You know, they know better they're gonna use their cell phone, but that's not always the case.

[00:15:06] Mark J: No, it's, and matter of fact, I can, I can give you a testimony to that. I came home, I've had, I've had a sip phone in my house since, God golly, I mean forever, practically. And in, um, way back in 20, oh gosh, this was 2009.

Um, I came home one day and wasn't feeling well. Told my daughter, who was 11 to call 9 1 1 and I collapsed in the living room floor. She picked up the coolest phone in the house, which was a Nortel. Sip

phone on my table next to my recliner in the living room. She dialed 9 1 1. Daddy does 9 1 1 technology.

This is the coolest phone in the house. This is gonna work. Did she have to dial nine? Hell [00:16:00] no. Not on my phone system. She didn't, but my phone system was in Dallas, Texas and I live in Ringwood, New Jersey ranked twice. She got 9 1 1. What's your emergency? I apologize for the faux southern accent to anybody in the south.

My daddy's collapsed on the living room floor. The call taker looks at her screen, sees Nortel Networks. 1221 Lakeside Boulevard, Richardson, Texas. My daddy. My daddy is on the living room floor.

[00:16:36] Max Clark: Mm.

[00:16:37] Mark J: Where are you sweetheart? She rattles off the address. Call taker says expletive. Wow, what am I gonna do with this?

Can't transfer the call. Don't even know where to transfer it to. So the call taker, the human side kicked in and she said, is there [00:17:00] another phone in the house? Yes. Don't hang up. Go get that phone and call nine one one. And she did. Now the call taker knew that the phone next to her was gonna ring and then she'd be totally screwed.

Or by the grace of God something else would happen. And it did. And she said it's ringing. And she says, when you hear them answer, I want you to yell as loud as you can. I have an adult male unconscious. I need an A LS response, a dance life support. So the call taker here, nine one one. Where's your emergency?

I need a 9-year-old or 11-year-old screaming This 9-year-old. I'm sorry. Wow. That stopped the entire process as the 9 1 1 dispatcher in Dallas knew that it would,

[00:17:54] Max Clark: yeah. got

[00:17:55] Mark J: Got

the code words,

what's going on? A 9-year-old doesn't [00:18:00] scream. I need an A LS response. So where are you? What's going on? Blah, blah, blah.

I was lucky. The paramedics were five miles from my house, just cleared on another call when they got here. I wasn't breathing and I had no pulse right there in my living room, that 10 feet where I am away from you right now. And I'm alive today because 9 1 1 didn't work in that environment. Who would use that phone to call 9 1 1 I don't know my daughter. Uh, and the quick thinking of the human element, some 11, 1200 miles away. So don't always throw out the human element with technology.

There's a lot of hidden stories in that big story.

[00:18:53] Max Clark: What's

the

fix for this, right? Oh, it's simple.

Okay,

[00:18:57] Mark J: Location awareness. [00:19:00] So you

got two problems. You got two problems that exist in the 9 1 1 network. When 9 1 1 was stood up in 1968, federal government said, who wants to be a 9 1 1 center? I've got money. Everybody raised their

hand. But think about it. I'm here in New Jersey. 9 1 1 goes, here you are, wherever you happen to be, you dial 9 1 1 goes there.

Somebody in California, you got the same number I. Going to different places. How does that work? What happens in the phone company? It's called location based routing. I know where you are, therefore I know where to route your 9 1 1 call. But those 9 1 1 systems around the country were built in silos. They don't talk to each other.

So if you're within my area of service, sure. 9 1 1, transfer, do whatever you want. You're across the country. I got no connectivity [00:20:00] between the areas, except in some limited situations where it was kind of a custom, like New Jersey is linked with New York because they put a special line in place to transfer because the cellular

calls mainly I'm two miles from the New York state border.

If I'm outside in my yard, that's where I'm getting the strongest signal

from my calls going to 9 1 1 in New York.

[00:20:26] Max Clark: Yeah.

[00:20:27] Mark J: Right.

[00:20:27] Max Clark: So

location awareness on cell phones work because you have.

you know, in

In your case, you have cell phone tower, which becomes a primary determination. And then the cell phone actually also has GPS coordinates and GPS signaling that can come across with it.

Right? So the, this, the device, the mobile device is a little bit more aware

when

when

you talk about like an IP device. Mm-hmm.

IP

device,

you

know,

IP

addresses aren't wonderful geolocation

selection. And

And also we're designed for it. Yeah. And if you're behind A VPN, it gets even more complicated because now where's your geolocation, right?

[00:21:00] So when you look at it from configuring,

like

location awareness for

a

mobile,

mobile and

and air quotes, right? A mobile user or a soft phone that's moving into different places. Um, this,

You

know,

know, if you're,

if

if you're, if you're using a soft phone on a cell phone, you can get more data, assuming that you have app access to, you know, location services on a cell phone.

But if you're on a desktop, maybe it's not there, right? So how. What's the fix for this for a company?

[00:21:27] Mark J: Well, that, that's where 9 1 1 Inform really comes into play. We've perfected the art of the future for location

by use using all of the network forensics that are available. It's not only local IP addresses on the device, but if there's a wireless adapter in the device, what other IP address

devices can I see?

Your cell phone uses GPS, [00:22:00] however, GPS is a line of sight technology. I'm getting GPS because I can see the satellite and I can't see the satellite. I'm not actually receiving that GPS signal. So when I was outside, my phone knew exactly where it was and it had good satellite coverage, maybe 3, 4, 5 different birds.

It was looking at. Second, I walked in the house not seeing any of those, but my phone knows, well wait a second, I just saw him a little bit ago. He can only go this fast, this long. He's gonna be in this area, sir, outside my, my zone of of location might be this. Now that I'm inside, it's gonna be here because mathematically I could have moved around.

And that's the GPS side of a cell phone. But the cell phone with WiFi's, looking at BSS IDs, it's looking at a bunch of other things on the network and [00:23:00] through online databases. Because Google and everybody else has been looking at you every time you've opened up an app.

[00:23:07] Max Clark: Yep.

[00:23:07] Mark J: Yep. You've got the thing called a EULA

and you click Yeah, sure.

Whatever.

You could have just signed away your car and, and writes to your swimming pool. You would never know.

Well, you're signing away. We've got rights to your location data. In every one of those.

[00:23:23] Max Clark: yep.

[00:23:24] Mark J: So that all the, everywhere you are, everything your phone sees goes back up into the cloud, into this location server.

And if I blindfolded you and drove you to your local mall, if one still exists, I know I gotta find a, I gotta find a new,

new story. Because malls aren't existent anymore. No,

there's a few.

[00:23:48] Max Clark: yeah.

[00:23:48] Mark J: Yeah. But if I, you get the idea, if I took you to your local mall and I brought you inside and I took the blindfold off, you'd look around and go, okay, there's Macy's, there's so and so, there's

whatever. [00:24:00] I'm in the such and such mall and I'm on the third floor. You'd know where you were. Well, same thing with your cell phone. I see the access points, public access points. I'm not attached to any of them, but I see the BSS IDs and I see their Mac addresses and I go in the database, the big database in the sky, and I said, I see this, I see this, I see this, I see this.

Well, if you see all of those mathematically, you have to be somewhere within this space. And when you start to see other ones and not see some of the ones I know you've moved to here and all that technology, is your phone going back to the network constantly.

[00:24:44] Max Clark: So a company has a moral and

social

obligation to

provide

access to 9 1 1

[00:24:51] Mark J: services.

Legal, federal, federally mandated legal under Title 47.

Actually, and this

[00:24:56] Max Clark: is the thing, I don't think everybody understands this, right? No. There's a legal [00:25:00] requirement. Yeah. Right. Which opens up a whole slew of other, you should do this just from a.

You

You know,

if

if something bad happens,

you're

you're

legally liable for it.

Right? That, that has a big risk in compliance.

[00:25:12] Mark J: Well, everybody's worried about the money, but that's not where the money is. The money's in what we call tort law

or the personal liability lawsuit. You did do this and cause me harm.

Yeah.

That's not even, that doesn't even go in front of a, of a, of, of the law that goes in front of a jury

who goes, yeah, that's pretty bad.

[00:25:30] Max Clark: So

how

how does a company deal with this? Because

going

back earlier, right, there's this

assumption

that they're

that

there's service provider, oh, we've got this PBX, we've got this cloud service, we've got this other thing, like they're taking care of it for us.

But

But that's not always true. Like in a, you have to configure it, and if you haven't configured it, it's not true.

And B,

maybe. the

the provider you have

isn't

actually providing what you think it's mm-hmm. So what do, what does a company do here and how do, how do people manage, or.

Understand what

what their risk [00:26:00] profile really is.

[00:26:01] Mark J: Well, you know, it's a great question and, and I hate to, I hate the answer that I have to give because I'm a technologist and I like people who figure things out, and I think people should be able to figure things out.

But some people, I, what I don't realize is like, well it, look, it's not my job. I got people to do that for me. So 9 1 1 is very complex. It's a lot more complex than you think about, it goes beyond the technology side. Is your building labeled properly? Are the databases correct?

I've got an old university that's got stone letters carved in the Johnson building.

Well, it has been called the Johnson Building for 50 years.

We call it something else. I'm not gonna change the granite. You know, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. So bring in, oh, I hate to say this, max, you gotta bring in a 9 1 1 consultant. Who knows what they're doing? Who can look at all this?

Whose job it is to understand [00:27:00] all of the intricacies and say no. 9 1 1 is not just three simple digits. It's much deeper. It's policy, it's internal procedures, it's network. Now you've made your people nomadic, they're not always in the same place. I can't use the phone number as a location indicator, or if I do, I've gotta be able to dynamically update that location.

And E 9 1 1 was not built for that, but next gen 9 1 1 was. And as we are migrating into next gen, there are next gen services available today that will do the conversion on the backend if you need to, when you need to. So that's the way forward. It's not putting an adapter on the old stuff to make it look new.

It's taking new stuff and putting an adapter on it so it'll talk to the old infrastructure. So that when it changes, you rip the adapter off and now you're next gen all the way without any more future work.

[00:27:59] Max Clark: [00:28:00] Some

Some service providers proxied this initially by introducing like,

oh,

oh, we can look up, um, location ID in the database as it registered, as not registered in the E 9 1 1 system.

Oh,

Oh,

this isn't registered. Let's send it to an intermediary piece out emergency call. Routing

[00:28:16] Mark J: center. Yeah. ECRC. And

[00:28:18] Max Clark: which, you

you know, like, okay, at least you're getting to somebody who can then say, okay, where are you? Okay, I need to transfer the call here. But that's not really great either because you're losing time and Nope. Time is pretty critical

[00:28:30] Mark J: in these days. So there was an incident in St. Louis at the municipal swimming pool. It was a brand new IP voice system. Um. It was one of the major systems. I'm not gonna throw the name out there because It

[00:28:44] Max Clark: It

[00:28:44] Mark J: throws the system under the bus unnecessarily, but the customer had in their contract, you will not install an IP phone without a validated address for 9 1 1.

The vendor had in their policies, we will not install a phone without a [00:29:00] validated IP address and location for an IP phone. Talking about a deployment of 15,000 phones.

[00:29:08] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:09] Mark J: About 10 of them fell out. You know what? In reality, that's not bad. 10 outta 15,000 that I gotta have this phone in tomorrow.

You know?

Hey, look, you are lucky it wasn't 101 of those phones was the emergency phone at the swimming pool. At the municipal swimming pool at A-Y-M-C-A swimming camp on the weekend. Someone went in the water. 6-year-old and went underwater and they had to pull him out. They grabbed that phone, they dialed nine one one.

The phone wasn't provisioned properly, so the phone call went to the ECRC out in, they're all, most of them were out in Denver, Colorado, or they're up in Canada, [00:30:00] actually,

[00:30:00] Max Clark: mm-hmm.

[00:30:00] Mark J: believe it or not. No big deal. Not, not a big deal. It's in Canada,

[00:30:04] Max Clark: Yeah.

[00:30:04] Mark J: you know, because the

person doesn't know,

[00:30:06] Max Clark: Yeah.

[00:30:07] Mark J: know, it doesn't make any difference.

Where are you? I'm at the municipal swimming pool. Okay. What city? Okay, now I gotta find an address because without an address,

[00:30:18] Max Clark: You can't dispatch.

Yeah.

[00:30:19] Mark J: I can't do anything. The call gets over to St. Louis Police Department. They figure out the address of the municipal swimming pool was way too late for this poor 6-year-old,

[00:30:31] Max Clark: Ugh.

[00:30:32] Mark J: and he didn't make it.

Everybody did everything they were supposed to. The emergency, well, even if it fails work the way it was supposed to. Nothing wrong with that, but that is not a good solution. They were told, well, it goes to an emergency call routing center, and these people find out where you are and they get it to the right dispatcher.

That [00:31:00] sounds great Max. But at the end of the day, help. Where are you? I don't know. I can't speak. Even if it's a 32nd delay. Hold your breath for 30 seconds, unexpectedly. Give it a try. It's uneasy to do. If you're expecting and you take a deep breath, maybe you can get the further 45 seconds out of it. You gonna get a minute.

No way. That ECRC because they get so many calls because nomadic devices were not provisioned correctly for nine.

Sorry about that. Nomadic devices were not provisioned correctly for 9 1 1. That ECRC is getting a ton of calls. Sometimes it's a five minute wait, sometimes it's 15 minutes [00:32:00] depending on who you're using as a service provider and what their staffing level is at the time of your call.

That's not good.

[00:32:09] Max Clark: Um.

[00:32:11] Mark J: so when you look at the reality of the whole process, you can see these things. Wow. No, it look, that looks great on you. Yeah, sure. In your opinion,

[00:32:20] Max Clark: if

if I'm running IT,

compliance,

risk, legal, whatever, for

a

a mid-market enterprise. Mm-hmm.

Say

a

a

couple thousand, a couple thousand employees.

Right? Okay. You know,

reasonable

size.

And,

and again, you, you, you say, okay, great, we've got this phone system deployed.

It

It

doesn't, I mean, at this point it doesn't even matter. I mean, we can, we can list all the major ones, but

we

we have this phone system deployed

and

and

we should be covered.

But

But the

the

reality is you're probably not covered in the way that you think you're covered.

[00:32:53] Mark J: Mm-hmm. Right?

[00:32:54] Max Clark: So now you have,

you

you have, you know, again, you have,

you

you

know, a, a moral responsibility, but [00:33:00] now you have a, a legal responsibility and you have a

financial

risk attached to it, right? So the business,

you can't, you can't, um, you can't claim ignorance, right? So like, all these things apply and come in

outside of

of

going through and, and auditing configuration on your platform of choice that you have deployed.

Can you

you

fix this problem?

How

How do you fix this problem?

and

Not be dependent on a third party or your service provider or your cloud platform provider

from

from saying, oh, you know, we, we used X company and they didn't support it, or we can't support it. Or we think we're supportive, but we're not really, you know, supportive. what

what

what options are available to you and, and where do you go from there?

[00:33:44] Mark J: Well, unfortunately, this is where you need to bring in an

expert as a consultant and do a health safety check on what you've got and someone you need, someone that understands the entire business end to end from an [00:34:00] enterprise perspective, from a carrier perspective, from an 9 1 1 ECC perspective that will go through and engineer this, and then come up with policies and procedures that you can follow.

And if you follow those, you will stay in compliance. But every year or whatever time you feel is, you know, realistic for your environment, someone's gonna come back in and they're gonna do an audit. And they're gonna know what to look for. And the first one is gonna be very intensive. And then that person will understand where you are falling down and what areas they've gotta look at closely.

Will you move people every day? So this is gonna create this problem. They'll learn what to look for in your network, but this is where a relationship is gonna have to be formed. And the fact of the matter is, you know, until next generation 9 1 1 is fully deployed and it's remediated all the way through [00:35:00] the network, and all of the devices that we're using are capable of looking at their environment and saying to an element, I am here, or I see this,

figure out where I am.

[00:35:13] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:14] Mark J: And that information can dynamically in real time go to public safety. I. Today it's in a static database. So it's, you know, and updating that may take days,

[00:35:27] Max Clark: Yeah.

[00:35:28] Mark J: not seconds. Um, when those problems disappear, the whole issue will disappear. But we're long time away from that. But we've gotta build these components and I'm a big proponent of getting these components built where you can, 'cause they will improve the process.

Little by little as we go through this,

[00:35:50] Max Clark: we have a

we have a lot of healthcare clients and as part of the process, when they go through a service provider selection, one of the things that comes up right away is we need a B, A A. Right? Mm-hmm. 'cause this becomes [00:36:00] a magic document that everybody needs for a compliance chain

around,

you

you know, um, PI and PHI and all these other acronyms.

Um,

if you read the fine print in these

BAAs and

and you actually pay attention to it, they all have very similar language, which says,

you are

I. you

are

now HIPAA compliant if you use our service provided you've configured it correctly. Mm-hmm. So there's always this giant escape valve in these agreements with service providers saying, we're HIPAA compliant,

provided that

that you've configured it properly, and if you haven't configured it properly, it's not our fault, it's your fault.

cause '

cause we just provided the tools for you.

[00:36:33] Mark J: Exactly.

[00:36:33] Max Clark: I,

I,

I'm kind of getting the sense that the same thing sits here,

you

you know, and these, and these agreements that we should, oh, by the way,

I'm

I'm

gonna give you the ability to configure your location database with our platform. But it's not our responsibility for us for you to configure it.

Right. You have to configure it properly and,

and

I.

I.

You know, am I, am I wrong there? Like,

[00:36:58] Mark J: so the problem is [00:37:00] a lot of this has never been tested in court.

So going back to Kerry's law with Hank Hunt, he, there was no law violated back in 2013. No law existed in Texas. No law existed in the US that affected Texas.

There was nothing, nothing that PBX, um, which was a major brand. PBX could not dial 9 1 1 without a nine if it was configured that

way. Happened to be, it wasn't as most systems were. Um, when that went in front of a jury under the tort claim, wrongful death, Hank called me up and said, Hey, Fletch, what's the average lawsuit go for?

I go, well, Hank that, that number's easy. It's zero. What do you mean? Well. When you go to court on a tort lawsuit, there's a person that's gonna get involved called an actuary, and they're gonna [00:38:00] say, what has been paid out on similar claims? And what's the average?

[00:38:05] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:06] Mark J: There has never been a public award by a jury for wrongful death by A PBX.

It's never happened. All been settled outta court. There've been plenty of

those, but those, are sealed records. You can't look at 'em,

[00:38:22] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:23] Mark J: an actuary won't even, even if he's told what they were,

cannot use them. So what's the average of 20 claims at $0? You know what? Hank won on that He was the first one to take it to a jury.

$41.5 million for not violating a law. And not doing anything they were not entitled to do.

[00:39:00] But a Texas jury said you should have known better.

[00:39:03] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:04] Mark J: And then it came out, you know what your IT people were at this telecom conference. Did you attend this seminar? Because I got people that'll say, you are at that seminar by such and such.

Ever tell you I talk with my hands a lot.

[00:39:19] Max Clark: And that's

that's

why I did this because I can then do this.

We

[00:39:22] Mark J: had a long discussion. We never talked about this part. Right. We have long discussion on technology. We never, never got the human side. Right.

[00:39:29] Max Clark: Yeah,

[00:39:29] Mark J: True. Oh geez. I love it being a podcaster. This is actually, actually exceedingly funny to

me. Yeah.

[00:39:36] Max Clark: yeah.

[00:39:37] Mark J: I had a guy doing this when he was talking the other day.

[00:39:40] Max Clark: Oh,

[00:39:40] Mark J: Oh, you gotta be really careful.

[00:39:41] Max Clark: You

[00:39:42] Mark J: The, the deskers, um. So well, I, I, I lost my total train of

[00:39:47] Max Clark: we talking, uh, you

thought. You talking, about, you

said that they were at a conference.

[00:39:50] Mark J: They were, oh yeah. So the hotel was at a conference and, and there were people who would testify.

Yes. There, people were there. When the jury found out that fact, wait, [00:40:00] you knew about this problem.

You knew you could fix it, and you chose not to. You're lucky we don't make this more than wrongful death.

[00:40:08] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:12] Mark J: Your actions directly killed this woman. And the kicker was, even though Kerry was stabbed 29 times, that, that four different coroners testify, she lived for at least 20 minutes after the attack. When 9 1 1 was finally called, you know what their response time to the site was? Four minutes.

So if that story doesn't just wrap everything together in one little package and go what the expletive inserted.

[00:40:57] Max Clark: Yeah.

[00:40:59] Mark J: And, and, [00:41:00] and you're gonna come up with what excuse?

[00:41:03] Max Clark: Well,

Well, you can't, I mean, that's the thing, right?

Ignorance is

is

not an excuse. It doesn't give you alleviation from legal requirements.

Again, forget the legal requirements, you know, go to moral and, and, and social requirements still, you know, like,

um,

[00:41:18] Mark J: I tell people, what would you do to someone who did that and it killed your son or your daughter? How would you feel?

[00:41:24] Max Clark: yeah.

[00:41:25] Mark J: What would you award?

[00:41:26] Max Clark: it's completely,

you

Oh, it's, you know,

[00:41:27] Mark J: yeah.

[00:41:28] Max Clark: And, and now of course, as you pointed out.

Now

Now we have federal law that mandates a certain, you know, certain, certain standard

[00:41:36] Mark J: Title 47 of the United States Telecommunication Act of 1934. As amended.

[00:41:40] Max Clark: Yeah. Changes

[00:41:42] Mark J: Yeah,

[00:41:42] Max Clark: a little bit. So now,

uh,

uh, okay, let's talk about cell phones.

[00:41:45] Mark J: Sure.

[00:41:46] Max Clark: Um,

large

companies, campuses, schools,

he, you know,

you know, hospitals, warehouse manufacturing, whatever.

Um,

cell phones have a requirement for nine one one service within these locations as well.

[00:42:00] And

yes, this is another thing that people don't understand of, like,

you

you can't just say, oh.

uh,

it's

it's

the cell phone company's responsibility for location services to work and cell phone coverage to work inside of your buildings anymore.

Can you, can you talk about this a little

[00:42:15] Mark J: bit? Absolutely. So it is not the enterprise responsibility to make sure that there's coverage in the building. However, let's just put that on the burner back burner for one second. The cellular companies do have a requirement to provide location-based services within certain parameters, um, in their service area.

And it's X percent of, you know, service is how they measure it, and that's their little escape clause to get out of the buildings where cellular doesn't quite work well for location because of that thing we talked about before. Well, I know where I last, I know where I was when I [00:43:00] last saw GPS, which I can no longer see in the building.

Think about Minneapolis, a lot of Skyways sky walkways. I get into a building and walk a mile

[00:43:11] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:12] Mark J: and never leave a building. My GPS says I'm where I started. More than likely, that's why that technology is on its way out. They're using what they call handset based location and handset based location is the cell phone looking at the wifi access points and all of that information.

So cell phone coverage at the carrier level is getting much better at the enterprise. You have to make sure you don't do anything that purposely disrupts that. And this is where I'm talking about extending cellular coverage into your building by putting in what they call a das.

Distributed antenna system depending on the technology.

And I don't wanna get down that 'cause we'll be here an hour just talking about that. [00:44:00] But it can configure it improperly. But the easy way make it look like you're talking to a cell tower, that might be a mile away. ' cause all it's doing is putting a little repeater on your roof and bringing that service in.

If the phone company or whoever's just looking at the cell tower, they don't know you're inside the building, they know you're on that cell tower that's a mile away that you got a microwave link

to.

[00:44:24] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:25] Mark J: So don't do that purposely. There are other ways of dealing

with it. There are daes that don't work that way,

[00:44:35] Max Clark: but

but

this opens up a can of worms.

Right. Because if you say, okay, we um, you know, have 2 million square feet mm-hmm. Of building and we want to improve cellular service internally 'cause we have a digital experience that we wanna provide. Mm-hmm. And so let's go out and, and now put a fiber das in place.

Distributed

antenna system in place

As

as

soon as you know, which usually, especially in the larger ones,

you

you

know, require,

uh,

connectivity to a signal [00:45:00] source.

Right. And you're, and if you haven't been through this before, part of the whole thing with having a really good fiber das provider

is

they

they have the ability to get you a signal source mm-hmm. From the major carriers. 'cause it's not just like automatic, like we put one in place and it just happens. It's a negotiation

with

with

at and t, Verizon, T-Mobile.

Like you spend some energy here.

Um,

but now as you start

deploying

your

your das inside of a building,

now

you've, you've,

you've

changed, you've made a, you made a critical change here

in your

your requirements now and what you can and

cannot

claim

as an

an

enterprise. As soon as you start putting these antennas.

on your ceiling,

[00:45:38] Mark J: Absolutely. How big is your hard drive, max? Because this, this conversation might go a day or two.

[00:45:45] Max Clark: it's

It's cloud, we got unlimited.

[00:45:47] Mark J: Good. Thank goodness for that. Um, I don't usually get to talk to people who understand the technology very well, so very, very good. I'm very impressed. But yeah, das is, so right now there's no, here's the thing, [00:46:00] are you breaking any new laws?

You're not necessarily breaking a law. Um, I think you're totally opening yourself up for a tort lawsuit. You did something that you knew was gonna break the way things work and you didn't do anything about it. So you are gonna get, and you know what? Look, people are worried about the money.

At the end of the day, do I care that I speed?

Am I worried about highway deaths? No. I'm worried about my insurance going up. I'm worried about the impact. That's the first thought on my brain.

That's why I don't speed. That's why I don't drive recklessly.

[00:46:36] Max Clark: Yeah,

[00:46:37] Mark J: So, you know, again, people think about the legal side and they realize, oh my God, I'm opening myself up to tens of millions of dollars.

[00:46:48] Max Clark: Well,

if you have now case law for,

um, a

a

wrongful death claim mm-hmm. With no legal requirement at $40 [00:47:00] million,

and

you

you say, okay, you have now a legal requirement,

wrongful

death claims are gonna carry

a, a,

a very different weight against that.

Absolutely.

And, And,

and

then you, um,

you

you

know, not to, um,

you

know,

know, not to, not to impugn, you know, insurance companies here, but, um,

you

you know, insurance companies make money by not paying insurance claims.

right?

So

So now you're, you're gonna have a,

push

pull

on,

you

know, is it willful negligence?

You know,

and

And what does that actually mean for

for

the

the

enterprise? Right? Like

are

are you insured and for willful negligence,

[00:47:40] Mark J: right. At that level?

[00:47:42] Max Clark: Well, probably not. Yeah. You know,

um, I,

I, you know,

we've,

um, we've done some,

we've,

we've,

we're doing

the

the

fiber DAS requirements has been interesting because we're starting to see things come down.

and, it came from a, a place I didn't expect, where it's, the local

[00:48:00] municipalities are

are

starting to push up requirements

in

in building codes and, and

come

from the angle of like firelight safety systems. So the cell phone and location services within it.

So

So

now is it federal law? No.

Is

Is

it state law? I haven't seen any yet.

I'm not aware of any. Maybe there's one out there that I don't know.

Um,

but

but I, we are, we have seen it now

in

local municipal code starting to come up from the other angle mm-hmm.

[00:48:25] Mark J: Of,

[00:48:25] Max Clark: um,

um,

public safety

are

are pushing this into code

and

and starting to come up. So we've seen cases where buildings.

you

know,

If you open up enough walls

and

even residential, you open up enough walls, you have to put in a fire suppression system.

You got it. So it becomes this whole thing of like, don't remodel more than the next percentage of your house in one time if you've got another house, old house, because

you're

you're gonna be putting in a water suppression.

And,

and, and we have seen that, I have seen that now with enterprise users

of,

you know, you can trigger these requirements if you,

you

you know, and, and then the, you know, so

I've

I've had some crazy [00:49:00] conversations where,

you

you know,

the,

the

supposition is, is, oh, if we don't,

if

if we don't do a, um, a signal survey, we never do the coverage survey.

We don't open ourselves up to this stuff because we didn't actually know.

[00:49:12] Mark J: Right.

[00:49:13] Max Clark: And

okay,

but you

know, like

now

you,

I,

I

I don't know. I don't, I don't,

that

that

kind of stuff is, uh.

that, That

That walks a line, I don't wanna walk.

you

[00:49:31] Mark J: And, and it doesn't sit well with a jury. And when you get an attorney, a scaled attorney in tort, they start making that case. You, there's no way you can even begin to look good

at all. Even if you claim total ignorance, doesn't matter. You should know better.

[00:49:48] Max Clark: So what's

what's happening with the ECCs? I, you know, you talk about like New York, New Jersey, or Lincoln mm-hmm. Because of cell phone towers where I live, it's the same thing. You know, it, depending on where you call, you get the wrong place.

You know, I have,

I

I have, um, [00:50:00]

uh,

papers pasted all over the place for our babysitters to come into our house. Like what's our address? What are the major cross streets, you know, make, you know, because

it

it happens, you know, if you're sure if you're in the wrong tower, you're gonna get a different 9 1 1 center and it's not gonna get services.

Now

our

our

city and the other cities are linked together and they know, you know, you're gonna have a delay on that transfer, but at least they can get you

over

to

the

the proper dispatcher and be able to roll trucks.

Right.

Um,

[00:50:28] Mark J: sure. But even think about a 32nd delay when your baby's not breathing.

[00:50:32] Max Clark: Oh, I, I,

[00:50:33] Mark J: So, you know, that delay, you know, is just, you know, and people say, well, you know, I, I call and I'm on hold for a minute anyway.

Okay, so now you're on hold for a minute and a half to me that says, you know, you're already gonna be, you know, you're not getting premium service,

instant service. You're delaying it even more. That's making you negligent with that excuse. That's my jury [00:51:00] thinking coming into play.

[00:51:03] Max Clark: What's

What's coming down the horizon?

I mean, you talk a little bit about,

um,

next Gen 9 1 1,

but as

as we,

you

you know, as you, as you look for, I mean, 'cause these things are so complicated. There's so many different things that have to interact with each other in order to upgrade, you know, and, and

you

you talk about backwards compatibility and adapters that can, that can link into older systems.

What

What does this evolution of this look like?

[00:51:25] Mark J: Well, you know, the best example that I like to give people, uh, to next generation 9 1 1 is television because it's understandable. You've got content and a camera recording something. You've got the transport network over the air and a television station, and then you have the receiver, which is your tv.

So I've got a high def 90 inch tv. I've got digital cable or fiber for my [00:52:00] service, but I'm watching a 1959 rerun of I Love Lucy on Nick at night. What am I getting on my high def color tv? Lucille Ball shoving candies in her

mouth,

[00:52:15] Max Clark: Great

[00:52:15] Mark J: in the clearest black and white that I've ever seen in my entire life. I know, you know what I'm talking

about.

The kids are going, what's he

talking about?

[00:52:23] Max Clark: Great episode.

My, my mom.

We

We watch, I watch a lot of, I love Blue.

My

My

mom is

huge

huge fan. Yeah, of course. You

[00:52:29] Mark J: know,

[00:52:29] Max Clark: it's

just

great that stuff.

[00:52:31] Mark J: But think about

that, right? You're gonna, you've, you've spent all this money and you've got all this monthly connectivity. What are you getting?

Getting a black and white signal Because the content, the origination

content can only be what it is. If you remove any piece of that, what you're going to get is the lowest common denominator. If I got high def colored TV from the football game and a TV to watch it on, but I'm, but I'm on Overthe Air analog signal, and I'm not [00:53:00] getting a high def signal.

[00:53:02] Max Clark: So

[00:53:03] Mark J: I've got high def transmission, high def digital cable on a nine inch black and white tv. I'm getting nine inch black and white. So that's next gen, right? Everybody's gotta build their piece. Fortunately, what's happening is the network in the middle is being built. The peace apps, the ECCs are being built.

Why technology refresh,

[00:53:24] Max Clark: Right.

[00:53:25] Mark J: You know, you buy a new PBX today, you might not have SIP technology. Can you have SIP phones? Sure, I can put SIP phones on A PBX that's got analog lines attached to

it. I'm sip the network isn't. But when it is, I'll have SIP all the way

through to same model. So I tell enterprises, look, the network's being built, it's already there in a lot of states.

The piece apps are on a five-year upgrade just like you are for technology. The new stuff they're buying is all [00:54:00] Nina I three compliant, next gen ready, and now the FCC has just come out with a new, um, requirement. PSAPs can or ECCs can declare that they are phase one or phase two next gen 9 1 1. Ready.

Phase one is I can accept a SIP circuit into my facility, so you can't send me analog calls anymore. It's gotta be a SIP based call. Phase two is, I've got to, within that SIP circuit, be able to receive what they call PITI flow presence information data object or data format. Location object. That's the caller information I could declare Phase one and phase two readiness on the same date.

Who's gonna put in SIP and not get the SIP services? It's all coming as one package, but they broke it [00:55:00] apart because it's the law and somebody wanted it that way. Once I declare that the carrier now has six months to deliver that service to the Psab, ECC, they might have to build out fiber, they might have to build out digital facilities.

They gotta build out whatever they have to build out. They got six months to deliver it. Once you go, I'm ready.

[00:55:23] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:24] Mark J: That stopped the whole, it's him. It's him. Finger

pointing. You are going to see we are at the beginning of the, the typical inflection curve and we're skyrocketing. I'm seeing states turn up their networks every single week.

Seeing peace apps connect every single week. Okay, great. When that happens, what do I have? I've got what I just explained to you. I've got the high def tv, the high def digital network, and I'm watching, I love Lucy. Until [00:56:00] enterprises start broadcasting in color, there's no value to the Peace app.

[00:56:08] Max Clark: I'm

I'm a weirdo and I read my city councils like meeting minutes.

Okay. And I can tell you that, um,

uh,

the

the city just recently signed the modernization for our 9 1 1 dispatch center,

And

and so that's going in place this year.

Right.

Okay. So it's like, I know where this thing is on this line.

I,

you

you know, as you're talking about this, I was thinking back, um, going back into like the two thousands, 2000 tens, if you were a service provider offering voice service

[00:56:36] Mark J: mm-hmm.

[00:56:36] Max Clark: you

You would typically have, um,

uh, you

you were purchasing PSTM connectivity.

You

You know, at some point it was either going through an aggregator.

it

It was going through a, a neutral tandem operator. There was actually one called neutral tandem, but,

um, or

you

you were going straight to the ILAC and buying services from the ilac.

Right. You know, or, or, you know, some combination. Um, but almost all the time you were [00:57:00] purchasing E 9 1 1 service through another entity. Mm-hmm. And there was this split. And, and even today

there's

there's still the split if you're a service provider between,

you

you know, what's your PSTN connectivity and where your 9 1 1 routing actually goes.

Sure. You know, quote, E nine one service

and

I, I,

talking with enterprises,

the

the majority of them, I don't think ever really understood that they could split those services themselves. Yep. And they could have A-P-S-T-N provider and they could have a 9 1 1 provider

and

they could take, you know, take matters into their own hands and control their own destiny and, and provide, you know, in a lot of cases,

better

service

than what

what they were getting from their voice service provider.

Right. How do you, how do you, like what's the right way to walk an enterprise through.

Kind, you

you know, this like transition of

don't

rely on, you know, or maybe, maybe you do want, you know,

rely on,

on, don't rely on, I mean the first thing of course is actually going through and doing a review, but,

you

know,

um,

it's

it's

not as [00:58:00] scary as I think as people think it is to turn up service and have

their

their

own 9 1 1 access.

[00:58:05] Mark J: It's not max. And you have to think about it. So before, when I was talking about you've got, you know, you used to have 6,000 9 1 1 ECCs in the US and you didn't have 6,009 little networks. They were typically broken up by a county would be a network and maybe a state, maybe a state would take their county networks and converge all them.

That's what New Jersey did. There were four areas and they put in a new layer on top, and now all four areas were connected at the next layer up in the stack. And everybody could talk to everybody in the state, but once you hit the state border, that's like the wall,

right? And. The same thing exists today.

There is no national umbrella network that connects every, mm-hmm.

There is no national umbrella network that connects everybody, but there actually is. [00:59:00] So there are providers called VPCs, voice Panish positioning carriers, and these VPCs exist at the cloud above all of the networks. And they typically have a nationwide footprint, and they have managed the connectivity down to each state level of local 9 1 1 service.

So now I've got the choice where I could split my 9 1 1. Send it to the VPC provider and all my regular PSTN goes to my PSTN provider. The way I get to the VPC is one of two ways. The old way, the easy way, I get a 10 digit access number and I send my traffic to them on that 10 digits, or I do a [01:00:00] peer-to-peer C connection.

The reason I peer-to-peer C connection is better is going to that 10 digit number. I'm still relying on the PSTN service and the central office to route me through the national network to get to the umbrella.

[01:00:17] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:19] Mark J: If I go peer-to-peer sip, I'm relying on the internet. To get me there and the internet's this huge mesh of technology and if this is broken, I could go this

way.

If this is broken, I can go this way. Right? You all, you know that. I mean there's a million ways to go. There might be a really long way, but before I can't get there. A lot's gotta happen.

Yeah.

[01:00:41] Max Clark: Yeah.

[01:00:42] Mark J: So I always tell people, yeah, it's easy to engineer 10 digit access. I'm gonna convert 9 1 1 to this number and the call's gonna go this way.

But you're only protecting yourself a little bit. 'cause there have been instances where there've been localized PSTN failures, [01:01:00] but people who were doing peer-to-peer sip still had a data connection. That SIP call was going like nothing was happening. And when you're engineering life safety services, isn't that the way you really want to think about?

[01:01:15] Max Clark: Yeah.

[01:01:17] Mark J: Because you don't know what's going on. It's like, it's like, well, I've got dual entrances on my building. Did you know it? They both went to that telephone pole right outside. I don't care if you got 10 entrances,

it all goes to that telephone pole right there.

[01:01:32] Max Clark: Every day

day

of my life. And not, and that's not even the worst one that we deal with.

And we see, I, you know, we, we, we get,

we

we

get referrals to new companies,

you know, that are having problems and it's, oh, we went out and we bought service from two different

carriers.

Yeah.

And

And then they find out that they go to the same box Yeah. In the info of the building. And you're like, well, we,

we

intentionally bought redundant service from this other company.

And you're like, well, that company bought service into your building from the first [01:02:00] company.

[01:02:00] Mark J: Yep.

[01:02:00] Max Clark: You know?

know, and, and like

it's,

um,

the

the physical layer, like, do not like

it.

It's so.

you

know, we were, I was joking with somebody the other day and we were, and we were referencing Jurassic Park and, you know, nature finds a way, right?

But like,

it's, it's,

it's,

more like, um,

you

you

know,

the

the simplest way is always what happens,

you know,

know, like what's the,

what's

the,

the, what's the easiest way to do this? It's like, oh, we can construct redundant,

can,

can, you

know, physical connectivity into the building, or we can use existing physical connectivity. Like we're gonna use the existing physical connectivity.

Exactly.

It's.

oh, it's just so frustrating. I feel so bad for people when I

[01:02:41] Mark J: find, yeah. I did a, I did a Y 2K remediation project for a large financial that had literally hundreds of circuits in New York City in their three different buildings. And back then, of course we were prior to nine 11,

um. I had gotten from all of the carriers, [01:03:00] street level fiber maps of where my circuits went, and I found 80%, 80% of about 500 circuits.

Were going through a single manhole on Thomas Street in New York City, so forget about the, the carrier diversity and the switches in the carriers. I didn't even have conduit diversity in New York City. So I got some guy with wearing his pants way too low. That's exposing his butt crack to me going, yeah, take right here.

And he's ripping up, you know, 80% of my conduits with one shovel.

Yeah,

that's not gonna work for me.

So when I did that, not only did I get circuit diversity, I got conduit diversity, I got central office diversity. I even took it to how many, 'cause the central offices got, I dunno, 10, 11, 12 switches.

Sometimes

I made sure that I didn't have too many circuits on the same switch and I took it even further and went to shelves in the switches [01:04:00] to make sure I was as wide as I could be.

[01:04:02] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:04] Mark J: And you know what? When nine 11 hit 60 Hudson Street went down because of power or the blackout,

[01:04:12] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:13] Mark J: it went down because of power.

I lost some circuits, but it didn't affect me. When nine 11 happened, I lost nothing because of my circuit diversity. Because what we had learned outta the blackout we did on a microwave back called in New Jersey. 'cause that bank had a lot of money back then. You can never do that today. But again, you do what you can for what you need.

They were in business.

[01:04:39] Max Clark: Yeah,

[01:04:40] Mark J: That was worth billions to them.

So, you know, how much is a life worth?

[01:04:46] Max Clark: well,

I

[01:04:47] Mark J: You know? Go explain that to the, to the parents of the 6-year-old that died at the swimming pool in St. Louis. Well, I'm sorry your kid drowned, but you know. Well we had the EEC ECRC in place. I don't care. My kid is dead.

[01:04:59] Max Clark: [01:05:00] yeah,

[01:05:00] Mark J: Explain that to Hank Hunt, right? His daughter is, his daughter is dead because his granddaughter couldn't dial 9 1 1 from a hotel room because that's what she was taught her entire life. You need help dial 9 1 1. I did four times. It didn't work.

[01:05:21] Max Clark: poor

[01:05:21] Mark J: Poor kid.

Yeah. I mean it's, this is, look, this is heartbreaking stuff and you know these are, people say Fletcher, you get too way too graphic on these stories.

No, I don't. You go tell, I had somebody tell Hank at a conference. I. I'm not even gonna repeat the comment, but if myself and another person weren't standing next to Hank, that guy would probably be dead today because it was all we could do to hold him back by him indicating, well, what's it, you know, what's the financial value?

You know? Do you know how much this stuff costs to fix this? Yeah, I do. She's six feet under the dirt in Marshall, Texas. You want to go [01:06:00] visit with me?

You tell that in the testimony in front of Congress and you get people listening to you. I'm sorry, but that's what it takes. You're talking about life safety here, max? Yeah.

[01:06:12] Max Clark: Yeah,

[01:06:13] Mark J: You got a kid?

[01:06:15] Max Clark: I

I got two kids. You got two

[01:06:16] Mark J: kids?

[01:06:17] Max Clark: We, um,

it's,

uh,

[01:06:22] Mark J: how old are they?

[01:06:24] Max Clark: They're

finishing first and second grade right now.

[01:06:25] Mark J: Great. Is that school 9 1 1 Compliant?

[01:06:27] Max Clark: you know?

[01:06:28] Mark J: No.

[01:06:29] Max Clark: It's a

[01:06:29] Mark J: It's a good question.

Yeah. No shit. It's a great question. And as a parent, you know what, when my kid was in school, I'll tell you, my town had the best 9 1 1 going for 'em. 'cause if, if they didn't have it, I probably had spare parts of the garage from being in the industry 40 years.

But, uh,

you

[01:06:47] Max Clark: You

know,

it's,

it's, uh,

I'm

I'm a, you know,

I'm

I'm an engineer, I'm a tech guy, you know, and like you, we, we talk, you started this off where,

you

you know, you can [01:07:00] find and look for technology solutions, but a lot of this really comes down to people.

[01:07:05] Mark J: Yep.

[01:07:05] Max Clark: You know, and, and not to say that people are the problem, but you have to support people

in

in getting them what they're trying to do and what they're trying to accomplish.

And

if

if you're not,

if

you're

you're not delivering that

in a, in a

in a, in a meaningful well thought out way.

You

You will find the, you know, you will find where things break.

You

You

will always find

where

where

things break if you're not, if you're not coming from that angle. And, um,

it's, it's a

a shame

that

a lot of times it requires tragedy before things change.

And,

um,

you

you

know, and it's,

you

know, I mean, what do you, it's the, the tragedy in this case with Kerry, you know, it turns into a law which will hopefully save other lives and people will get, you know, will make changes and

and

we

we won't have another story about this.

[01:07:58] Mark J: Yep. And that gets on in [01:08:00] 2018. It's starting to fade out, but I don't, I don't give up.

I talk about it every time I have a conversation and uh, you know, it's like people say, don't you get tired talking about that? No, I don't get tired talking about it.

[01:08:11] Max Clark: yeah,

[01:08:14] Mark J: You know, the, the Hunt family is, is like an extension of my family. I get Christmas cards from most of their family or calls every single year.

I'm weird Uncle Fletch from New Jersey to them. And you know what? That's a badge I'll wear proudly.

[01:08:27] Max Clark: I don't

I don't think it's fading out. I think the human connection to it

might

not

not

be,

you

know, it's, it,

you

you

cross some line where like, what the cause is leaves, and now you just have the,

you

know,

know, the impact of it,

[01:08:41] Mark J: right?

Yep.

[01:08:41] Max Clark: So,

so

so maybe the, maybe the human connection, that human story is fading out a little bit now, you know, it's just, oh, we have to do this, and you, and you get into that point where it's like, oh, we have to do this and we have to do this because it's the law. And, you know, why is it the law? Maybe people don't understand, but we have to do it because it's the law and this is important that we have this,

you

[01:09:00] you know,

that's

that's a good outcome.

[01:09:02] Mark J: Yep. Well, I think the, the thing that people ask the most is how much is it gonna cost me if I don't do it? And I get caught.

[01:09:08] Max Clark: Ugh.

[01:09:09] Mark J: That just internally, I gotta bite my tongue,

my cheek and you know, go kick myself. Because to me that's personal. And it was a question like that that set Hank off where, you know, it was his daughter who died and that person was banned from conferences for five years for that too.

But, so

[01:09:33] Max Clark: I

[01:09:34] Mark J: they've, they got their, their due. But, uh, you know, it's, that's the thinking. They lose the personal connection of why, and they look at the money side. Well, what's it, you know, you know, has there, has there ever been a lawsuit? Well, yeah, now there is. 'cause guess what?

The average was zero. Now the average is 41 and a half million.

[01:09:56] Max Clark: the

the

answer is it's gonna cost you a lot less to not deal with the, you [01:10:00] know,

I mean,

I mean,

in this case it's really, it's really basic. It's gonna cost you a whole lot less to actually just

do

what

what

you're,

you know

you know, what you have to do.

[01:10:06] Mark J: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:07] Max Clark: morally

and

and

legally you have to do this

and it's

it's

gonna cost you a lot less to do that than

to

to not do that.

Right?

[01:10:15] Mark J: So

when this first started, I used to, I was traveling every week and I was in probably three different hotels in a week. And I would look at every single phone and I would take a picture of the phone template that says, okay, emergency dial 9 9 1 1. And, and what I did there was the hotel, there was the address, there was the telephone number, there was the brand, Hilton Marriott,

holiday Inn, whatever.

And I was getting a lot of press back then. And I had, I started this little thing back in 20 13, 20 14. There were hotels that were not compliant, just getting plastered on the internet. And then Hank would take the phone number and call them and go, let me talk to the [01:11:00] manager. I wanna tell you a story about my daughter.

And let me tell you, it was a long road, but one by one by one hotels started remediating their systems.

And I, and I gotta thank Marriott, who was the first to go, we're fixing this, but I gotta really give it a a, a kudos to Hilton who took a little longer to come up with a plan. But they built a plan and they built a requirement.

It's the number one question on the franchise checklist. Every single month they go to a room, they make a 9 1 1 call, and they check with the PSAP first to schedule it. They make sure that. The address information is right. They make sure the front desk was notified and they understand. And that is the very first thing on their checklist.

And there are major consequences if they fail, that there is the same sign in every lobby, near every phone, by every elevator [01:12:00] in Hilton. It's ridiculous of the level that they went through. And that's why, and you know what? That's where I stay because I feel the safest there.

[01:12:10] Max Clark: That's

That's actually a great point.

Can you

walk through

through the process of testing 9 1 1? Because

people

don't

do

do

this, right? Like it's, and,

and,

and,

and

you

you

can do it and you can schedule a test and you can test. So how do people schedule a test of their 9 1 1 service and validate locations?

[01:12:28] Mark J: Yeah, problem. So there's two ways. The first is the old fashioned way where you've gotta go through.

You gotta get a group of people in your in your building and you gotta send them out on a search. And you gotta find this document that's probably somewhere in some of these desks. It's called a phone book. Or you can go to the web and you can Google your local town and there will be a non-emergency contact number there for the police.

If [01:13:00] it isn't, call the town hall and get

it. You'll be able to reach out for them. And the question you want to ask, I am at this address, are you the 9 1 1 center that answers my calls? Yes or no? If they're not, they'll tell you who might be. The county Sheriff's Office, might be a town that they're collaborating with.

They'll connect you with the people that answer your calls. You call them on the non-emergency number. Hi, this is Max Clark. I'd like to test my 9 1 1 calls. What's your policy and procedure to do that? And they will tell you it's typically, we restrict it to a certain day. You might have to call you schedule it, but you might have to call ahead of time to make sure that we're not really super busy in the middle of something, or just make a phone call and tell us you're gonna be making that call, whatever. They'll have a policy in place. New York City, probably the [01:14:00] strictest one I've ever seen. Yeah, it's gonna be a Wednesday morning from 4:00 AM to 5:00 AM you can make three calls and that's it. They typically won't tell you what they see on the screen, but you can say, do you see this? And they will say yes or no.

[01:14:20] Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

[01:14:21] Mark J: And if they don't see that, it doesn't matter what they see, it's broken and you need to go fix

it. Or if you've got a 9 1 1 service with some type of provider, whether it's a gateway or a box or just a service in the cloud or whatever you've got, you ask them, do you have an offer, a 9, 3 3 testing, testing service? And what 9 3 3 typically is? It's not a number that's valid in the PSTN, but it's a number that's most [01:15:00] 9 1 1 providers have active, or it'll have a 10 digit access number or a sip peer to peer connection.

But what it is, it's a direct connection to the 9 1 1 cloud, and at that point it simulates. Or you should be simulating or replicating the same thing in your PBX that happens from a routing perspective as 9 1 1. You've gotta make sure you've got that duplicated under 9, 3 3, you dial 9, 3 3, it hits your carrier cloud, your 9 1 1 carrier cloud.

They see it coming in as a 9 3 3 call.

[01:15:41] Max Clark: Mm.

[01:15:42] Mark J: They process it all the way through like a normal 9 1 1, except at the very last state. Instead of routing to a PSAP or ECC, they route you to an IVR that says the number I received is this. The address information I have [01:16:00] is

this. This is what the record is gonna look like when we send it to the 9 1 1 center had you dialed 9 1 1.

And that lets you dial 9 3 3 all day long from any device. And the worst thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna go, that's not what I should be getting. Hey, go look at this and figure out what's broken.

And most of the major carriers have that 9 3 3 service put in place. If they don't ask 'em, why not? Because you're not gonna buy service from them because of that.

[01:16:34] Max Clark: Right.

[01:16:38] Mark J: And watch how fast they turn it up.

[01:16:40] Max Clark: yeah.

[01:16:40] Mark J: because you know what, from a technology perspective, that's routing logic. And you know, if that takes you more than 15 minutes to build from scratch in your network, I don't know what you're using

[01:16:51] Max Clark: Well.

[01:16:52] Mark J: your people are trained as, but yeah, I'll give you, I'll give you the steps in my head

if you tell me what you got.

[01:16:58] Max Clark: If you haven't configured [01:17:00] that and your service provider and, and you, you talk to your service provider and your service provider doesn't have a way to test this, like how, how big can they possibly be? Yeah, more like real of a service provider. I mean, it's

anybody

who's.

has

any size, has some enterprise that's gone through a corporate, you know, risk compliance like exercise, even if it wasn't you

that's asked to to do a test.

And

And

if they haven't

facilitated

that

that test, that means

maybe it's an

it's an indication of the maturity of their service provider. And that's another good reason to think about it, right?

[01:17:30] Mark J: I'll tell you another great story with Hank Hunt. So at the time, he worked as a maintenance guy in an adult nursing home. And, uh, they had an old North Star key system

[01:17:41] Max Clark: Okay. Oh, really old. Yep.

[01:17:42] Mark J: and uh, you know, we talked about 9 1 1 compliance.

And I'm like, well, you're okay because you gotta, you know, you've got direct line selection and here's a couple little things you just need to make sure that's happening. And everything was fine. Well, he calls me one day and goes, Hey, my nine, my, [01:18:00] my, I just got a new VoIP system and it's broken for 9 1 1.

But they tested it and it worked. And I'm like, okay, well let's go back and see what they did. So. He relied on the vendor to say, you know who I am. You know how important this is. Make sure 9 1 1 works for me. Yeah, sure. No problem Hank. And they did, we did you test it? Yep, we test it. Everything's good. And he was showing his boss.

Of course Hank knows all the local 9 1 1 centers because of the tragedy, they feel like crap because they couldn't save his his daughter's life. Look, if we got the call, we could have done something. We're

sorry. Hey, I just got a new VoIP system. I wanna make a nine one one call and show my boss how good of a job I did.

Okay, no problem. Hank, just tell us it's you when you call. That's 9 1 1 9 1 1. What's your emergency? Yeah, it's Hank. I'm just [01:19:00] doing my test call. Where's your, what are you, where are you located sir?

[01:19:03] Max Clark: Oh,

no.

[01:19:04] Mark J: It's Hank Hunt. I'm making the test. 9 1 1 call. Sorry. I need your address. This is nine one.

Is this 9 1?

1?

[01:19:11] Max Clark: no.

[01:19:12] Mark J: Yes.

It's a 9 1 1 dispatcher. He reached the ECRC for the VoIP provider. The ECRC happened to be in Canada. Doesn't matter. It could have been Colorado, Canada, Florida, whatever. That's irrelevant. But it happened to be Canada. No idea who he is. No idea where he is. That's why the call goes to them. There's nothing to, that's why, that's their purpose.

I'm taking the call. That can't be found. The stupidest thing for them to ask is looking for data that's gonna tell 'em anything. It doesn't exist. It's why they got the call. The person can't tell you they're stuck. It goes back, I thought you guys tested this. We did. You know what they test did? They [01:20:00] dialed 9 1 1 9 1 1.

What's your emergency?

Just testing. Thank you.

[01:20:03] Max Clark: Oh,

[01:20:03] Mark J: Hang up.

[01:20:06] Max Clark: Oh

[01:20:06] Mark J: Oh boy.

Now think about that, right? Would you have done that? Would I have done that? Maybe if I wasn't aware or knew differently. I dialed 9 1 1. I got 9 1 1. I didn't get the right 9 1 1, but you know, I didn't know to even check about that or you know, because I didn't know how it worked.

But now I do, and now I educate people.

[01:20:30] Max Clark: Yeah.

[01:20:31] Mark J: I tell them that story. They're going like, well, okay, I tested, but did you test?

[01:20:36] Max Clark: Did you

Did you

really test?

[01:20:37] Mark J: Did you really test?

[01:20:39] Max Clark: What did you test?

Fletch,

thank

thank you very much. It's

[01:20:45] Mark J: like, it's, it's like my wife. I still, there's gotta be money in the account. I still have checks.

[01:20:48] Max Clark: No.

[01:20:51] Mark J: I'm sorry.

[01:20:52] Max Clark: Oh,

[01:20:53] Mark J: no.

You know, she, she got hacked one day and, and they got her credit card stolen. I never called the, the, the company to cancel [01:21:00] the cards. Those people are spending way less money than she ever did.

[01:21:03] Max Clark: Oh,

[01:21:04] Mark J: no, no, no.

[01:21:04] Max Clark: no, no. Do you really want this

[01:21:05] Mark J: I was kidding. Of course.

[01:21:09] Max Clark: Butch, I'm gonna cut you off before you get in big trouble.

[01:21:11] Mark J: Yeah, thank you very much.

Because that's, uh.

yeah, that's a, I got a bookcase of that.

[01:21:15] Max Clark: Oh

my

[01:21:16] Mark J: my

[01:21:17] Max Clark: goodness.

Fletch,

thank you very much. This is, um, this is fantastic. You know,

I,

I,

um, I hope

people

take this to heart

really. And,

you

you know, um, and just, um, you know, just how important this is. And it's not,

this

this

is not

bleeding

edge

edge

technology.

This is not crazy configuration. No. This is just a little bit of time, a little bit of configuration, a little bit of front work and a little bit of testing

and,

and, and,

you

you know, with just a little bit of each of those things,

you

you know, tragedies could be prevented.

and

it's,

[01:21:50] Mark J: Just the time I spent with you today, I've, because you're a technologist and you understand at least two or three levels beyond what I actually spoke to [01:22:00] you, you can now put, I can see that by the expression on your face.

A lot of the boxes that were kind of dis, dis ambiguous are now connected.

[01:22:08] Max Clark: Yeah.

[01:22:09] Mark J: And you know, I've, what I've done is I've given you the ability to retell the story to others and just, that's my purpose. I wanna expand that knowledge out. And the reason I'm that 9 1 1 informed is because we've understand the problem and we built the solution.

We didn't try to fix

the old stuff. The old stuff is going

away. Yeah.

It's not a 1967 Mustang that I wanna restore.

[01:22:36] Max Clark: Oh, I want to restore one of those, but,

[01:22:39] Mark J: I want the Porsche,

[01:22:41] Max Clark: ugh.

[01:22:41] Mark J: so I built the Porsche. That's, that's where we come into play. And it's all about education. It's all about understanding if you, 'cause like I said, this is not rocket science.

[01:22:52] Max Clark: Yeah. Yeah,

[01:22:53] Mark J: It's technology we use every single day.

[01:22:58] Max Clark: that's a

[01:22:58] Mark J: That's a great point. So thanks [01:23:00] for the opportunity to get the message out there because, uh, you know, that's why I don't, I don't go around settling my product. I tell people what the problem is, how to fix the problem, what the next generation of the solution is gonna be, and when they go shopping for that.

Okay. They'll find me

[01:23:20] Max Clark: Perfect.

Fletch,

thanks again.

[01:23:25] Mark J: No problem.​

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