Dialing 911 on UC320 - Kari's Law

[Andy R.]

Texas just came out with a new law requiring phone systems / phones to be able to directly dial 911 without having to dial 9 to get an outside line. You must be able to take the phone off hook and dial 911 and get an emergency responder.

Can I get this to work on a UC320 phone system. Even in Key mode when the phone goes off hook it defaults to the internal extension. You would have to select a physical line to to dial 911 directly otherwise it goes fast busy.

Anyone have a suggestion or solution?

[Andy R.]

Phones being used are SPA509G. Also forgot to mention that 9 is being used as a steering digit to access an outside line. Tried switching the steering digit to 8 but then dialing 9 resulted in fast busy.

[Andy R.]

After some research I figured out that the dial plan can be edited from the phone web interface. No such option exists in the UC320 to edit/create a dial plan.

I am going to try turning off the phone provisioning on the UC320 (by turning off the provisioning option on the phone itself). Then I will edit the dial plan and report back with my results.
I am thinking that adding "9, <:9>11" at the beginning of the dial plan should get the job done.

Link to dial plan document for SPA series phones: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/csbpipp/ip_phones/administration/guide/frame_source/500-series-7-5-7/ip_phone_admin/shared_Dial_Plan.html

[leidenkranz · Accepted solution]

So I labbed it up and found the following on version 2.3.2 (6):

By default you must dial the trunk prefix before dialing 911.

Workaround:

1) Change the trunk prefix (if set to 9) and set 9 as an extension range

2) Create a "911" user

3) Manually create a phone with a fake MAC address (example "999911111111")

4) Assign phone to "911" user which then allows you to edit "911" user features

5) Call forward user "911" to external number "911"

What happens is 911 isn't a valid number in the dial-plan until a (fake) phone is assigned.  By assigning a fake phone, the phone can never ring and is unreachable.  Because the phone is unreachable the call-forward will immediately kick in.  This emulates the dial "911" for emergency without the trunk prefix.

Note 1:  If an auto-attendant had an option "9", this will need to be removed or changed to a different digit.  You can't use digits in the AA that begin in an extension range.

Note 2:  Do not assign a live phone to the "911" user or the phone will ring and the call-forward will be delayed by the "After (seconds)" setting which is what you DO NOT WANT to happen.

[Andy R.]

Wow, thank you. I will give this a shot and report back!

[Andy R.]

This solution is confirmed working and is much better than changing the dial plan on the phone itself. You make the change in the UC320 and the phones can still be configured from the UC after. Simply fantastic and thank you!

[maacke285]

Have this problem as well and this does fix for one location.  My campus has multiple addresses and I can only get the 911 fake station to forward out one trunk for one location.  Any ideas on how to have that idea duplicated when you have more than one trunk at different addresses?

[Dan Lukes]

Either you have same issue, then follow the solution desribed here, or you have different (although simmilar) issue, then don't hijack this thread and create new one.

Chances someone will repond questions in closed thread (claimed solved) are rather low.

Just advice ...