RALEIGH, N.C., March 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Bandwidth Inc. (NASDAQ: BAND), a software company focused on communications for the enterprise, today announced surpassing a key milestone of over 20 million 911 endpoints under management across the U.S. and Canada. The industry-disrupting 911 call routing provider, long known for delivering a comprehensive suite of highly-reliable emergency services solutions, has seen dramatic growth in recent years stemming from its full service support for new and complex E911 regulations like Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’s Act.
“The 911 endpoints registered on our network represent the lives and livelihood of millions of individuals within both businesses and communities that need fast, reliable access to emergency assistance,” said Nick Sgroi, Senior Vice President of Product and Network Strategy at Bandwidth. “In particular, our ability to help enterprises meet RAY BAUM’s Act requirements for popular softphone applications like Zoom Phone and Microsoft Teams has been a key driver for our emergency services growth in the past year. Bandwidth is helping CIOs answer an urgent and complicated question: how do we protect the safety of our employees while meeting regulatory compliance needs?” 
Unified communications platforms now allow users to work and communicate from anywhere, but this added flexibility creates serious challenges when locating them during a 911 call. Prior to the dramatic COVID-19-related shift to remote work, the FCC mandated that enterprises must provide a dispatchable location with their 911 calls, which includes a civic address plus specific in-building location information such as room, floor, or suite to help locate callers. Solving this challenge for users who are frequently moving around a corporate network or are transitioning between work and home requires advanced emergency services capabilities such as those available in Bandwidth’s well-established E911 Dynamic Location Routing solution.
Bandwidth provides accurate E911 connectivity and a radically simplified approach to location management. As both a network operator and leading CPaaS provider, Bandwidth has been able to combine modern E911 tooling and automation with nationwide emergency services reach. Bandwidth’s advanced technology also supports emergency notifications for compliance with Kari’s Law, near-real time address validation and error correction to ensure location information is compatible with public safety standards, misdial protection, and the industry’s first “933” validation feature that reduces the distraction of test calls placed to public safety answering points (PSAPs).
With the recent acquisition of Voxbone, Bandwidth’s reach now extends emergency services to over 30 additional countries outside the U.S. and Canada. This expanded global presence opens up new opportunities to invest and develop the dynamic emergency location technologies still emerging within the highly-regulated UK and EU markets.
Continuously innovating, Bandwidth is one of only two providers able to support the native dynamic E911 feature within Microsoft Teams. Teams-enabled enterprises can accelerate their transition to the platform while also meeting the RAY BAUM’s Act dispatchable location requirements for fixed and non-fixed VoIP.
“Our customers trust that they can expand their business, meet complex regulations, and launch new communication solutions knowing that, with Bandwidth, 911 is fully supported,” said Adam Covati, Bandwidth’s Vice President of Research and Development, “but our commitment to innovating within the 911 community doesn’t end there. The devices and solutions we use to call for help are expanding and Bandwidth is actively involved in developing technologies that anticipate these trends so that users can also connect to emergency services within the applications and IoT devices that have become part of our daily lives.”
As evidence of this, the growth in recent years of home security, personal safety apps, and other connected devices led Bandwidth to develop its Emergency Calling API, a solution geared towards SaaS and application developers who want access to public safety but don’t otherwise need the cost and complexity of managing a complete telephony infrastructure. Technology innovators including the connected safety platform, Noonlight, are able to seamlessly connect their subscribers with emergency services.
To learn more about Bandwidth’s full suite of 911 solutions for enterprises, unified communications and business VoIP providers, and SaaS and application developers, visit bandwidth.com/911.
About Bandwidth:Bandwidth (NASDAQ: BAND), is a leading global enterprise cloud communications company. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Zoom, Uber, and RingCentral use Bandwidth’s APIs to easily embed voice, messaging, and emergency services into software and applications. Bandwidth is the first and only CPaaS provider offering a robust selection of communications APIs built around their own IP voice network. More information is available at www.bandwidth.com.
SOURCE Bandwidth Inc.
Related Links http://www.bandwidth.com

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Faced with a terrifying emergency, Patty Mead expected to get help when she called 911.
But it was not to be.
Mead lives at Gardom Lake and rents out a separate house to tenants. On March 19, she and her tenants were enjoying a campfire nearby. She went home to go to bed about 10 p.m.
The woman, who Mead wished not to name, was alone by the fire when her adult son, who went inside the house for a couple of minutes, heard her cry out.
Heading back outside, he was horrified to see his mother trying to get out of the burning fire.
Mead explains that the woman must have had her back to the fire and, because the fire pit has a bit of a lip, stepped back, lost her balance and fell in.
Her son managed to pull her out, burning his hands doing so, but she was badly burnt, in shock and panicking. Mead said she hit her head, had severe burns on her arm and side, as well as lesser burns on her face.
Because there is no cell service where Mead lives, she went and grabbed her land-line phone and came back. She called 911 and reached a dispatcher, but no help was to be found.
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Mead surmised afterwards that perhaps the reason was because the address at Gardom Lake is listed in Enderby – in the 700 block of Park Road – and the land line is based in Salmon Arm.
Mead said she tried to maintain her composure while the dispatcher, based in Surrey, asked questions such as whether there was a park nearby, was she in a campground with a fire pit, and such.
Mead said she was then told that an ambulance would not be sent because the dispatcher could not find the address on their map. She was also told that a nurse would be put on the line to help with providing first aid.
However, a nurse didn’t get on the phone; Mead noted that the recording as she waited said the lines were busy that night. She was also told if she got cut off, to phone back.
Mead said the woman’s husband was also calling from a land line and getting the same result.
She estimates they waited about 15 minutes until she decided just to drive the woman to Shuswap Lake General Hospital in Salmon Arm. Altogether, with the wait and the drive, Mead estimates it was 45 minutes until the woman arrived at the hospital.
After that, she was taken to hospital in Kamloops and then flown to the burn unit at Vancouver General where she underwent skin grafts.
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Mead pointed to the need for change in several areas.
One is having dispatch in Surrey, she said, where operators are unfamiliar with the area.
Mead said she doesn’t blame the dispatchers, as they can only work with the information they’re given. However, it’s unacceptable for someone to be told their address can’t be found, when the local ambulance and fire service would have been there in minutes.
Another is the lack of cell service. And the problem with the address, which she thinks perhaps the Columbia Shuswap Regional District could help remedy. She also didn’t think it was right to be put on hold to wait for a nurse in such an emergency situation.
She said she has been told by MLA Greg Kyllo and BC Emergency Health Services that they are looking into the incident.
Mead said the March 19 incident has concerned many people. A lot of seniors live at Gardom Lake as well it being home to a public park and a bible camp.
“It’s worrisome if it happens again to someone else.”

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California 911 centers now can receive vehicle-crash data and injury-severity predictions from OnStar through the RapidDeploy’s RadiusPlus map application that has been installed at the 450 public-safety answering points (PSAPs) in the state, according to an announcement released this week.
Budge Currier, 911 and emergency-communications branch manager for California, said the initiative will enhance the ability for 911 centers to process quickly the considerable amount of telematics information generated by OnStar when a vehicle crash occurs.
“With the existing technology that we have in our PSAPs today, we didn’t really have a way for that to be displayed on the call-answering equipment, which answers the 911 call, or on computer-aided dispatch, which is what they use to dispatch resources,” Currier said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “There was this gap where there was this data that could be used to save lives, but there was no way to display it in every PSAP in California.
“The data’s available, and now you need a way to display it in the PSAPs. That’s where RapidDeploy comes in. We’ve deployed their technology to every PSAP in the state, and they’ve entered into this agreement with OnStar, where OnStar will send that data, and it can be displayed in the PSAP by RapidDeploy. Now you’ve got access to that crash data in every single PSAP in California, through this RapidDeploy software.”
Catherine Bishop, senior manager for OnStar Emergency Services, said this marks the first time that 911 centers will be able to receive crash telematics data directly—something the company has wanted to do since OnStar began collecting the information from vehicles in 2004.
“We’ve done a couple of pilots with NHTSA and the DOT in the past, but in those situations, it’s primarily been just test data,” Bishop said. “So, it’s very exciting to have real-time crash data available when it’s actually going to make the difference.
“Before I came to OnStar, I ran a 911 center. Learning about OnStar, I was thinking that getting this data to public safety was right around the corner, and I’ve been with OnStar now for 17 years … Getting data to public safety is definitely one of my lifetime goals, so I’m glad to see it happening.”
Some of OnStar’s telematics include the speed of the vehicle at the time of a crash, the point of impact, and which passengers were wearing seatbelt. OnStar also uses this information and automatically puts it into an algorithm that calculates the likelihood that one of the passengers in the front seat has suffered a severe injury, so responders can better focus their efforts while on scene.
“For the last decade, we have been able to predict whether there might be a high probability of a severe injury within the vehicle,” Bishop said. “We’re on the third version of that, and we’re fairly accurate with our assertion.
“We have visibility on the front seat, in terms of occupants. We have yet to be able to apply that to the entire vehicle, just because the sensor capabilities are not as sophisticated in the second and third rows. But the PSAPs California will be able to see—at least for the two front-seat occupants—for example, that the passenger is the one with the high probability of injury.”
For 911 centers, being able to receive the OnStar data promises to be much more efficient than having it provided verbally to a telecommunicator, who often is limited in the time they have to devote to the effort.
“Our emergency advisor has the data on their screen, and we attempt to provide the data,” Bishop said. “But in many cases, you know how busy these 911 centers are. To take it all down and have to type it all in takes time. Most of the time, they’re not able to, just because of how busy their centers are.
“This is really going to transform the landscape. My hope is that, as California embraces this and we have some very successful outcomes, we’re going to see other states want to replicate the success. We’re going to be prepared to respond accordingly.”
RapidDeploy CEO Steve Raucher echoed this sentiment.
“This is our first deployment with OnStar, and I would imagine that it would be the first of many,” Raucher said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “California has led the way across the U.S., in terms of next-gen 911 and the interesting things that it does with technology. We’re very, very proud to partner with both OnStar and CalOES to deliver these signals.”
RapidDeploy’s RadiusPlus call-taking map and Eclipse analytics products are available to all 911 centers through a CalOES initiative that resulted in RapidDeploy being installed in all PSAPs in the state. Currier emphasized that each 911 center has to decide whether to activate the RapidDeploy capabilities, including the crash information from OnStar.
“The two pieces that we try to be particularly careful of are, ‘Is the PSAP properly trained on how to use the data,’ and ‘Does the PSAP actually want all of that data?’” Currier said. “That’s a local-agency decision that we honor.
“Any PSAP today in California that’s not using this software yet is in the process yet of saying, ‘Hey, how do I get it? We’ve had nothing but positive feedback on that. Those that hear about it, want it.”
Currier said he has been particularly impressed by RapidDeploy’s ability to adapt to the quickly evolving needs of 911 centers.
“Any feedback that we get on how the technology is performing and what RapidDeploy is doing, we make sure that any feedback we get from the PSAPs is reflected in the software,” Currier said. “They’ve done a really great job of that throughout the life of the project. Whenever we hear of anything, we reach out to them and say, ‘Can you provide this capability, as well?’ and they say, ‘Yes.’
“Last year at this time, we rolled out a text-from-911 capability. From when we first deployed RapidDeploy to when it was deployed statewide, I think it was something like three months, which is remarkable.”
When RapidDeploy entered the U.S. market in 2017, most 911 administrators were wary—if not adamantly opposed—to using cloud-based solutions like RapidDeploy, opting instead to continue relying on on-premise systems. But those concerns about the cloud are virtually nonexistent today, according to Raucher.
“Do you know how many RFPs I’ve seen that have said ‘on-prem’ in the last 12 months?” he said. “One—literally one.”
In addition to California, RapidDeploy has statewide contracts with four other states, including announced deals in Kansas and Arizona, Raucher said. Meanwhile, RapidDeploy’s cloud-native approach makes it easier for its platform to integrate data from new sources like OnStar.
“The data is coming down a pipe, and it’s going to be surfaced directly into our 911 call-taking map, which is called RadiusPlus,” Raucher said. “We’ll be able to bring all of the telematics data that OnStar is famous for visualized directly in the platform.
“So, not only do we have a direct integration with all of the mobile-handset manufacturers, and we’re going to be bringing data down from other telematic sources. But right now, OnStar is leading the way with us in California by surfacing those signals to improve the response times with better visualization and data to 911—the first first responders, who need it most.”
Bishop said the fact that OnStar’s crash information can be displayed on a RapidDeploy screen already used in California 911 centers is critical.
“We were really happy that RapidDeploy already had a presence in California and that their RadiusPlus was already being used by telecommunicators,” Bishop said. “The last thing we wanted to do was to be relegated to some screen over in the corner that no one ever looked at, because then it would be irrelevant. But it’s going to be front and center.
“I think that, if telecommunicators see that there’s a high probability of severe injury or a situation with an electric vehicle, they’re really going to take notice and act upon that, even before our voice call comes in.”
Currier said the level to which the OnStar data is integrated is dependent upon the California 911 center adopting RapidDeploy and having the proper equipment installed.
“With the RapidDeploy solution that we’ve got deployed already at all of the PSAPs, it would display on that screen,” Currier said. “That RapidDeploy screen—in most cases—is running on the machine that’s running CAD for them, but in some cases, it is a standalone machine. It just depends on the capabilities in the PSAP.
“[In those cases,] RapidDeploy is being used in the PSAP, through a web browser, on a screen. It’s different from the call-processing equipment and the computer-aided dispatch. We had to do that, because those two pieces of technology cannot integrate this data. So, we needed something to be able to display this in every single PSAP in the state of California, regardless of where they were in the transition timeline.”

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