AT&T Says Its ESInet To Deliver Photos, Videos Natively In NG911 Environments

AT&T announces that AT&T ESInet—the carrier’s i3-compliant Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet) that is designed to help enable next-generation 911 (NG911)—will support photo and video messaging natively within 911 systems, as well as the delivery of automatic crash alerts

By Donny Jackson, Editor, Urgent Communications

AT&T recently announced that AT&T ESInet—the carrier’s i3-compliant Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet) that is designed to help enable next-generation 911 (NG911)—will support photo and video messaging natively within 911 systems, as well as the delivery of automatic crash alerts.

AT&T’s director of next-generation-911 products, Mike Guerra said that 911 centers have been able to leverage photo and video communications in recent years via a variety of over-the-top “workaround” applications, but such technology is less than ideal when public safety needs to respond to the most time-sensitive incidents.

“With workarounds. [911 telecommunicators have to say,] ‘I’ll send you a link citizen. You can click it, and then you can start to share your video.’ It’s not native, and the experience—I would say—is cumbersome,” Guerra said during a telephone interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications conducted while he was attending the annual NENA Annual Conference and Expo last week in Long Beach, Calif.

“The industry has been advertising that it’s been out there, but the reality is that the adoption is low, because it takes extra steps and extra processes to invoke these things. During an emergency, you don’t have the time to really do that … We always say that seconds save lives. But if you can take a minute or two off [the response to] an emergency call, that seems like hours when you’re actually on the other end needing help.”

Such additional processes will not be necessary with the latest enhancements to AT&T ESInet, according to Guerra.

“Everything we do with our family and friends with our cell phones, you should be able to do with a 911 call-taker … and to do it natively,” he said. “That’s finally what this announcement is about, and AT&T is the first to be able to do this and is proud of it.

“We’re at this turning point now, where all of the fun, innovative stuff, the cutting-edge things we’ve been talking about [associated with NG911], I think you’re really going to start to see in the next one to three years.”

This native delivery of photo and video communications through the 911 system is scheduled to be available to AT&T ESInet customers beginning in October, according to an AT&T press release.

“It’s available, if you are an AT&T ESInet customer,” Guerra said. “When they let us know that they have the right call-handling equipment and we’ve been talking to them, we’re actually able to enable that content for them. It’s just letting us know that they want to consume it—we don’t ever want to give something to the PSAP that they don’t want and interrupt their workflow.”

Supporting photo and video communications natively in the NG911 comes on the heels of AT&T teaming with Intrado and Toyota to deliver automatic crash alerts to public-safety answering points (PSAPs).

“You’re now starting to finally get to what everyone’s been talking about with next-generation 911 over the last 10 years,” Guerra said.

Initially, these functionalities will be supported only for emergency calls from AT&T Mobility customers, but Guerra expressed optimism that such capabilities will be available with 911 communications from Verizon, T-Mobile and other wireless carriers in the future.

“They [other carriers] have to connect to us and start to send us the same information in that format,” Guerra said. “What we’d love to be able to say to our ESInet customers is that it doesn’t matter who the wireless carrier is. Even if someone is calling in an event from a Verizon phone, we would like to love to give our AT&T ESInet customers that information. Right now, it [works fully when] you’re an AT&T wireless carrier going to an AT&T ESInet—that’s what we’ve enabled. Now, we want to expand it to the other wireless carriers.

“It’s not difficult. We’re absolutely talking to them. It’s just a matter of being certified, and there is probably some minor development for them to do to bring things into the right format.”

Within the PSAP, the AT&T ESInet’s delivery of multimedia communications should work with a variety of call-handling equipment that is designed to meet the NENA i3 standard and accept information in the Emergency Incident Data Object (EIDO) format, Guerra said.

“It shouldn’t matter what call-handling equipment you have,” Guerra said. “Whether you have Intrado, Motorola, Carbyne or whatever vendor you have, we want that to come through a standard i3 call-handling [solution] and populate in that EIDO format.”

Guerra noted that AT&T is the only carrier that plays a role in all aspects of a 911 call and its response. This comprehensive knowledge helped AT&T’s development teams bridge the gap between NG911 standards and operational reality in delivering multimedia natively to PSAPs in a manner that leverages cloud-based solutions, he said.

“There’s an advantage that AT&T has, in terms of being in every aspect of an emergency call—from the wireless service to the citizen, to getting to ESInet, to being able to dispatch it out using FirstNet,” Guerra said. “We really see the whole event, from end to end.

“Because we’re uniquely positioned, we were able to get the two parts of the company to work together, so the wireless commercial aspect can now send the video and the content to our ESInet natively.”

AT&T’s area vice president for FirstNet and NextGen 9-1-1 products, Matt Walsh echoed this sentiment.

“Public safety is our top priority, and the new features of ESInet represent a major advancement in transmitting and protecting critical emergency data,” Walsh said in a prepared statement. “By providing a dedicated, secure connection to leading cloud providers, we are enhancing PSAPs’ ability to deliver fast, effective emergency responses while safeguarding against cyber threats.”

Executive director of the North Carolina 911 Board, L. V. Pokey Harris said such enhancements promise to deliver significant benefits to PSAPs and the citizens they serve.

“When Hurricane Helene struck last September, the Statewide ESInet enabled calls to be automatically and seamlessly rerouted, ensuring that citizens who were able to access provider dial tone could call 911 and have their calls answered,” Harris said in a prepared statement. “We eagerly look forward to the enhancements and improvements of the ESInet, ensuring our citizens and public safety continue to benefit from the latest NG911 technology.”