Government buildings, schools, and public facilities carry a specific responsibility that goes beyond general phone system reliability: when someone in your building dials 911, the system has to work correctly and tell first responders exactly where to go — every time, on every extension.
Why Kari’s Law Exists
Kari’s Law requires organizations using multi-line telephone systems to enable direct dialing of 911 without needing to dial a prefix like “9” for an outside line first. It’s named for Kari Hunt, who was killed in a motel room in 2013 while her 9-year-old daughter tried and failed four times to call 911 because the room phone required dialing 9 first — a tragedy that revealed a gap affecting hotels, hospitals, schools, and office buildings nationwide, government facilities very much included.
What It Actually Requires
Any phone connected to the organization’s system must allow a caller to dial 911 directly, with no additional digits required, and the system must be configured to notify a central location, on-site or off-site, where someone is likely to see or hear that a 911 call was placed, so staff can direct first responders appropriately. For a school or government building, that central notification point is often a front office or security desk — it needs to actually be staffed and monitored, not just technically configured.
RAY BAUM’S Act: Precision Down to the Room
RAY BAUM’S Act, effective January 2021, requires a dispatchable location with every 911 call — not just a street address, but building number, floor level, and suite or room number where applicable, so first responders can find the exact location of an emergency in a large facility. This location information, along with a valid callback number, must be automatically relayed the moment a 911 call is placed. In a large government campus or multi-wing school, this is the difference between responders arriving at the right door and responders arriving at the building and having to search.
Why This Applies to VoIP Specifically
FCC E911 regulations are mandatory for all interconnected VoIP service providers, designed specifically to ensure VoIP users get the same emergency response protection as traditional phone users, who can reasonably expect that dialing 911 will connect them to help that knows exactly where they are. Public facilities that have migrated to VoIP for cost or flexibility reasons need to confirm this configuration was carried over correctly, not assumed.
Where This Matters Most
Multi-line telephone systems are commonly used in government offices, schools, hospitals, and large public campuses — anywhere a single phone system serves many extensions across a large or multi-floor facility, accurate dispatchable location becomes both more important and more technically involved to configure correctly.
This Isn’t a Set-and-Forget Configuration
As staff move between offices, floors get renovated, or extensions get reassigned, the location data tied to each extension needs to stay current. Outdated location mapping defeats the purpose of RAY BAUM’S Act even if the system was correctly configured at initial setup — a room renumbered during a renovation and never updated in the phone system is exactly the kind of gap that goes unnoticed until it matters most. The FCC issued a new FAQ as of July 2025 clarifying scope and intent for organizations working through less straightforward configurations.
How CelereTech Helps
CelereTech configures VoIP systems for direct 911 dialing and accurate, automatically transmitted dispatchable location data down to the floor and room level, sets up the required on-site notification for 911 calls, and helps keep location data current as facilities and staff assignments change over time.