Level 3 Communications today announced it is added support for nomadic voice-over-IP users to its E911 offering. The new capability will be market-ready before the end of 2005.

The Level 3 network solution builds on the National Emergency Number Association’s “I2” initiative, taking into account that that effort is still a work in progress, said John Morgan, vice president of product development for Level 3, in a telephone interview from the annual NENA conference where Level 3 made its announcement.

“We started working on this about 18 months ago,” Morgan said. “We had the expectation of participating with NENA in addressing the challenges of VoIP users, including non-geographic numbers and end points that were going to move. The FCC decision has expedited those plans.”

The Federal Communications Commission ruled that VoIP providers must offer E911 support, which identifies the physical location of a caller to emergency services and attached a 120-day deadline. As part of that ruling, the FCC requires VoIP providers offer an E911 solution for nomadic users, or those who take their analog telephone adapter with them on the road and use their VoIP service along with a laptop computer.

“We have seen tremendous interest in this since the FCC ruling,” Morgan said.

The solution involves working with commercial VoIP Positioning Centers (VPC) that will collect and store updating information on customer locations. When an E911 call comes in from a VoIP phone, a query is launched by the Public Safety Access Point to the VPC, and based on a key exchange, user location information is provided and the call is then routed to the appropriate PSAP.

The process involves careful coordination among the VoIP provider, Level 3 as the trunking and E911 provider, the VPC and the PSAPs, Morgan said.

“In some cases, our customer will work directly with a VPC and in some cases, we’ll handle that relationship for them,” he said. “It is a complex process--you have to choreograph all the different processes and how keys are pulled and managed.”

Level 3 would also like to see NENA’s I2 standard ratified quickly so that it can be implemented as a true standard, Morgan said.