Guest - Scott Navratil - Dash911
Host - Michael Johnson - PodTech

Scott Navratil -Dash911
My name is Scott Navratil, I'm the Director of sales and marketing for Dash911 Solutions in Denver, Colorado.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Now, we're here at ISPCON in Santa Clara and tell me a little bit about what Dash911 services does? I mean, I'm seeing a lot of things up here, I am kind of guessing it has to do with VoIP and was trying to find somebody in a real emergency. Tell me a little bit about it?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Dash911 specializes in E911 for VoIP, particular situations where you have nomadic subscribers. So if you are an internet service provider or existing VoIP provider and you want to service or provide 911 for your subscribers anywhere in the US or Canada, you would out source that to a company like Dash911.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Now, I know that there's been a couple of situations that have come up, where you basically can't locate someone. This is obviously one of the solutions to it. Tell me a little bit about how it works?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Right now, there is no technology available that actually can automatically locate that subscriber. There are some companies out there that are working on technology where they all use GPS, WiFi they'll put a microchip in the phone or the VoIP phone or whatever and then they can automatically detect where that location is. That's on the horizon. Right now, it's up to the subscriber to let us know where they are and what we do that's unique is that we make it extremely convenient within typically, one to two clicks; a nomadic subscriber can update their address on the fly and within 15 minutes have a national 911 database to know where their new address is or where they are located.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Can you describe what a nomadic subscriber would be?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Sure, a nomadic subscriber would be anybody who can take a VoIP-enabled phone, unplug it from their house and let's say if they are going cross country, if they live in Dallas, they work in Dallas and they are going to Santa Clara for the ISPCON show, they can take their VoIP phone with them. They get into their hotel room and they can plug it using either the ATA or some of them will directly plug into an Ethernet port and then they will have to log back into the service provider's network and actually have a telephone working at their new address.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So does Dash911 give them essentially locatable presence. Is that the idea?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Exactly, what we do, we use the nation's largest back-end (ph) provider who's Intrado and Intrado has the connectivity to over 6000 PSEPs or public service entering points throughout the United States. So what we do basically is we provide the provisioning interface or a way for these customers to update their address depending on whatever location that they are at and then once they input that information into the system, we submit it to Intrado, who then updates it, the nationals call the LA database with the new address for that subscriber of that telephone number.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
How long does that process take?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Sometimes it takes, say probably 30 seconds to 5 minutes typically, usually no more than about 15 minutes.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Okay, now who would say use your services or would be like now that there's a lot of talk at the show about Municipal Wireless. How's that going to work with say a city if they've got more and more VoIP subscribers coming online. Who would use the technology in the most effective way?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Anybody with -- we actually have existing telephone companies like, Celex, who actually are outsourcing to Dash911 because it's actually more affordable to route outside of their geography, so a lot of them use local carriers, Pac-West, there's a lot of them out there and what they can do is outsource it to us, so we can route those calls anywhere in the US and so, anybody who has a telephone subscriber it doesn't have to be a voice subscriber, we can actually route traditional wire line 911 calls as well.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So anything, from a small business on up to a TELCO company?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Absolutely, we've got some of the largest local exchange courtesy the United States are actually customers of ours.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
There must be certain benchmarks that you go to as far as population, there were numbers of ID's that you can locate?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Sure, we actually specialize on small-to-medium size VoIP providers. We don't sell to the end subscriber we're wholesale only, we are host and service provider. And our pricing range is -- we've got customers with no subscribers, we've got some customers with tens of thousands of subscribers. So, our pricing model is tier (ph) pricing and we have a small implementation fee which covers the engineering resources, the hardware that we actually issue for secured access into our administrator portal. And, then that also covers the testing, the provisioning testing, the call routing testing and then all the documentation that we provide to our customers once they go live, which enables them to file with the FCC for compliance.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Now I am going to propose a little situation to you, something I was reading about in the newspaper a little while ago. We were talking about that right before the Podcast, where the fellow has his VoIP phone at home...

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Okay.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
...and he calls in right and the system can't see him -- he calls 911 he's having a heart attack. The system can't see him. Now how -- where does Dash911 plug into that infrastructure because you got the end subscriber, you've got the provider of the VoIP service itself and then you've got the city involved in that city emergency services. Where does Dash911 come into that picture?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
We actually are probably the second step up the ladder. What happens is when the customer places a 911 call, its going to go through his service providers on soft switch. So, if they've got -- there's a number of them out there but basically that customer is going to trap that 911 call and he'll forward that to us over the PSTN or he can actually forward it to us over. But the way it works right now is, for some reason that customer hasn't provisioned their address into the system and what we do is we provide that interface to do that, lets say they just got the phone, 20 minutes after they finished signing up on the work providers website they have an emergency, they dial 911. Well, what will happen is, that call will still get routed to us from that service provider, because they're all note to trap any 911 call gets forwarded to Dash911 will receive that call, now we won't know who that customer is so we actually forward it to Intrado and the base of the call go to their ECRC which is the Emergency Call Relay Center. It's a 24/7 emergency operator call center who'll actually get on the phone with that end subscriber, they'll identify what the emergency is, where they're located and then that operator will manually route that 911 call to the correct PSEP or the public service entering point for that subscriber.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So it kind of -- it literally intercepts those 911 calls?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Absolutely.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
With a solid backbone of nationwide and how long does that process take?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
There I mean we -- again, once the call hits us we'll talk in a matter of milli-seconds. The latency is very low but actually once we get the call, we actually forward it to Intrado and I mean the total -- typically the 911 call time is usually anywhere from 3 to 4 minutes.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Now, what happens now? Like why don't you just sort of picture this and describe the story. Guy has a heart attack; he dials 911, if that system isn't in place, like Dash911?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Sure, give me an example, let's say, mom and dad, hire a babysitter for the night, they're going to go out to dinner, they've got the Spence new VoIP phone sitting in dad's office. Say probably, in an hour or so into the evening, the baby starts choking, and the babysitter is going to grab the telephone because the VoIP phone typically looks like any other telephone, she doesn't know it's an Internet phone. So she's going to dial 911. So without a service -- if they have a service provider who does not outsource their services to like Dash911 or another 911 service provider, chances are the call won't get routed, it will just be dead space, it may not ring through, its not going to go anywhere. So there's definitely there's not going to be a 911 call being sent into the 911 system. Now back to the service provider that they are using, outsources to a company like Dash911 based on the scenario we just talked about, the call will get routed appropriately. Regardless if that customer has basic 911 or E911, the call will go through regardless.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
With a lot of people anybody offering Internet telephone services?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Basically, anything VoIP related if they have a phone, if it looks like a phone, and it acts like a phone, it has to have 911 on it. Whether you are an ILEC or CLEC, an Internet service provider, you have to provide 911 services to your customers. You cannot allow them to opt out, its not an option they can't opt in, they can't opt out, it's basically required. So I think a lot of people are trying to get out by saying well we'll make them sign a waiver, we'll make him you know "Hey either you got to understand that you don't have 911 service at this phone, or you have to use a back up you know landline or cellular phone for 911" and that's not what the FCC says. Basically what they're saying is that if you don't have E911 capabilities, you are not to market to any areas where you don't have that. So that's the big misconception is that a lot people think that no it's not required for my VoIP customers because its not the primary phone and that's incorrect.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So, if folks can like find out a little bit more about Dash911 services and those things that you provide, can you give us the website?

Scott Navratil - Dash911
Yeah, its www.dash911.com, that's D-A-S-H 911.com

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Scott Navratil is the Director of sales for Dash911 Solutions and we're here at ISPCON 2006 here in Santa Clara, California. Thanks for being with us on the Podcast today.

Scott Navratil, Dash911
Appreciate it, thanks a lot.