Motorola Solutions says its Emergency Services IP network (ESInet) and the ESInet of AT&T support data-rich 911 call transfers within Maryland
By Donny Jackson, Editor, Urgent Communications
Motorola Solutions has achieved interoperability between its Emergency Services IP network (ESInet) and the ESInet of AT&T within the state of Maryland, allowing the transfer of next-generation 911 (NG911) calls to be transferred between the vendors with all associated data being maintained, according to a Motorola Solutions official.
Motorola Solutions’ senior vice president of command-center software, Todd Piett said such much-anticipated ESInet-to-ESInet interoperability between key NG911 vendors theoretically has been possible between providers that follow NENA’s i3 standard. However, it took prodding from the state of Maryland—particularly from Jack Markey of the state’s office of interoperability—to force Motorola Solutions and AT&T to actually work through “the ugliness of integration details” needed to make the network-to-network interface (NNI) a working reality.
“I’ve got to give Jack and the state of Maryland a lot of kudos for really driving this to fruition,” Piett said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “They were very instrumental in getting AT&T and Motorola Solutions to collaborate on the agreement.
“There’s no regulatory or commercial driver that incentivizes vendors or forces vendors to do this. The state said, ‘This is ridiculous,’ and pushed us to collaborate and pull this agreement together, so—across their entire state—if you are transferring calls, it’s a true NG911 call, and all of the associated additional data and context comes with that.”
Motorola Solutions and AT&T each serve about half of the NG911 traffic in Maryland through separate contracts, Piett said. Transferred 911 calls within each vendor’s system have included all of the rich NG911 data associated with an emergency call, but that was not the case when a call was transferred between vendor network until this ESInet interoperability was enabled, he said.
“The truth is that, unless you have some sort of agreement—in this case, a network-to-network interface agreement—when you transfer calls, you might as well be on a legacy, CAMA-trunk model,” Piett said. “There’s no data or context … that might have been gathered on the call when it was initially answered before the transfer. There is no video or text content—none of that comes along [with the transferred call]. It’s just a phone call that came across.”
Similar interoperability is possible with other jurisdictions surrounding Maryland, according to Piett.
“Maryland’s in a busy part of the country,” he said. “So—not just in their state but across Virginia, Delaware and all of the bordering areas—this provides a framework that would allow them to do the true data sharing that NG911 was designed to do across state boundaries. It’s not just intrastate but interstate.”
Now that ESInet interoperability with AT&T is in place within Maryland, Motorola Solutions is eager to reach similar agreements with other vendors and other jurisdictions, Piett said.
“It should be replicable,” Piett said. “This model we have with AT&T, we can take to other places. It’s a great one that AT&T can do with others, and we can do with others.
“We’re ready to work with everybody. We’ve worked through it, and we know how this works now. We have a framework agreement that we can take to the next vendor and say, ‘Let’s turn this on and do this.’ We’re excited to do it. We’ve already done the hard work, and now we’re ready to just deploy it everywhere.”
Motorola Solutions did not have to do a lot of product development work to make its ESInet interoperate with the NG911 system from AT&T, but both vendors had to do a lot of detail-oriented work to ensure that all data moved properly between their platforms, Piett said.
“As with any standard, until you actually get into the details and work through it with a partner or other organization, you don’t get into all of the details about how you make that interface work,” Piett said. “That’s kind of what the state forced in this model.
“That’s really what [Maryland’s Markey] got us to do: create a true ESInet-to-ESInet interface, where everything is transferred and works correctly, and work through those nitty-gritty details that a lot of people just aren’t incented to do, because there’s no real business driver forcing that.”
Officials throughout the 911 community have long anticipated evidence that ESInet-to-ESInet interoperability could be implemented in a real-world scenario—particularly between NG911 market leaders like Motorola Solutions and AT&T.
Piett said he hopes such NG911 interoperability becomes commonplace in the future.
“In terms of other states, everywhere should be doing this,” Piett said. “I want to give a lot of credit to the state of Maryland. It’s the way it should work. It’s ridiculous that it’s not tied together that way everywhere.
“The state [of Maryland] forced us to work out those details that everybody kind of avoided. I think it’s a great replicable model that can be done across the country.’
