Avaya Teams with Texas A&M University to Develop National NG9-1-1 Communications Network

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration solutions and services, today announced that its Avaya Aura® unified communications architecture and applications will support the development of a national Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) communications system in a project being led by Texas A&M University. The new NG9-1-1 system is expected to cost-effectively and securely handle emergency communications with capabilities beyond voice, including SMS, video, real-time text and data.

Avaya is collaborating on the project with Texas A&M under a $90 million national Broadband Technology Opportunities Program federal grant. Avaya is also part of a Texas A&M program supported by a separate $6.6 million grant to fund the build-out of the U.S. Community Anchor Network broadband system and NG9-1-1 infrastructure. Avaya is also part of a Texas A&M program supported by a separate $6.6 million grant to fund the build-out broadband infrastructure that can also support NG9-1-1 infrastructure within the State of Texas.

Avaya technology will be used to support interoperability testing and related research by the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), other industry vendors, solution providers and post-graduate research students. Texas A&M also plans to use the Avaya Aura infrastructure for research related to 9-1-1 call routing.

"Avaya has long supported emergency calling operations with the security and reliability that are hallmarks of Avaya communications systems," said Brett Shockley, senior vice president, Corporate Strategy, Development and Innovation, Avaya. "As consumer technology brings new forms of communication into everyday use, it's critical that the nation's 6,500 9-1-1 centers have the means to respond quickly to any form of media coming from any device. Using Avaya Aura in the project with Texas A&M will help advance the national effort to increase security and safety made possible by America's NG9-1-1."

Avaya Aura, an open, industry standards-based unified communications platform, ensures that IP-based emergency communications in any media format are routed to the appropriate emergency response center based not only on the location of the caller, but as well as other contextual information. The routing mechanisms conform to NENA i3 standards, an open architecture being adopted across the nation in the delivery of next-generation emergency access services.

In working with Texas A&M on NG9-1-1, Avaya expects to play a significant role in several emerging initiatives, including:

Government efforts to bootstrap development of a nationwide next-generation Emergency Services IP network with end-to-end Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).
Interoperability testing of Avaya's technologies with third party systems, including call origin, network and contact centers.
Core SIP communications technology and Software as a Service or cloud capabilities to address 9-1-1 nationwide needs as contact centers make upgrades.
"With the FCC now taking an assertive leadership role, federal and regional investment starting to have an impact, an upgrade of the nation's emergency services communications infrastructure to an open NENA i3 standards compliant framework (NG9-1-1) is finally underway. As a leading Telecommunications research institution, we're delighted to be collaborating with Avaya in a research, development and testing capacity, leveraging the Avaya Aura platform and industry compliant solutions in furthering this cause,” said Walt Magnussen, Ph. D., Director, Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center (ITEC), Texas A&M University.