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By Rob Garretson
Enterprise wireless LAN vendor Aruba Networks has teamed with E-911 service provider RedSky Technologies to introduce a Wi-Fi-based emergency call-location system for campuses, branch offices and telecommuter offices, an initiative Aruba touts as eliminating the last barrier to migrating from wired phones to mobile Wi-Fi phones in the enterprise.
Voice-over-Wi-Fi was projected to be a booming market, but retiring existing PBX equipment and moving to Wi-Fi-based voice systems has been slowed by the regulatory requirement to support enhanced 911 services, or E-911, that allow first responders to locate emergency callers. Two years ago ABI Research forecast that the number of access points used to handle voice traffic will experience compound annual growth of 93 percent over a five-year period, reaching nearly 56,000 access points by 2012. But that growth hasn’t materialized, in part, due to the E-911 barrier.
The Aruba-RedSky collaboration addresses that major concern regarding voice-over-Wi-Fi in the enterprise, according to Aruba officials. Mobile networks of users with softphone clients, smartphones and dual-use phones are becoming increasingly prevalent, especially in the healthcare, retail and higher education fields, they note. And enterprises are equipping teleworkers with wireless access points so they can make calls and access the corporate network from a range of devices from home offices.
One requirement shared by all these applications is to be able to pinpoint the location of a caller in the event of a 911 emergency and provide accurate location information to dispatchers. As wireless LANs have spread across enterprises and institutions and the popularity of voice-over-Wi-Fi grows, regulators have begun calling for Wi-Fi networks to offer the same E-911 services that are mandated for wired phones.
To date, Wi-Fi call location has not been particularly accurate, according to Aruba and RedSky, because most existing systems rely on “IP parsing” that translates the IP address of the closest Ethernet switch or router to a physical location. Yet Wi-Fi calling allows users to talk on the move and roam far from the nearest Ethernet switch.
Aruba and RedSky say that the system they’ve developed combines Aruba's campus, branch office, and telecommuter/home office equipment with RedSky's E-911 Anywhere service to provide accurate, real-time information about a Wi-Fi caller’s location and relays it to the E-911 dispatcher. Aruba's wireless LAN gear sends real-time location updates to the RedSky service, which triangulates signal strength and other data and updates internal, external and IP-OBX databases with the location of the clients. RedSky is certified for use with Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, and Nortel IP-PBXs.
“Previous attempts to locate voice-over-Wi-Fi E-911 callers were inaccurate and unreliable,” said Nick Maier, SVP for RedSky Technologies, in a statement. “By partnering with Aruba we can offer a best-in-class user location system that works wherever users do -- at home, in remote offices, and on the campus. We believe this solution will be a boon to universities, hospitals and distributed enterprises.”
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