Risks of using "911*" speedcall to mitigate accidental 911?

[dg]

Howdy folks.
It appears that using 9 for an outside line is a really bad idea. No matter how much we train our folks here, someone invariably 'accidentally' calls 911 almost every week. To make things worse, almost everybody hangs up on them, apparently not even realizing the misdial. This is a huge problem for us as the local cops are kinda getting, um, frustrated with us. (Curiously, our old Nortel also used a 9, but 911 misdials were almost nonexistent with that system. Go figure.)

I've been looking at the document in the faq about using 911* as a system speed call to mitigate the problem somewhat. What are the risks? I know right now the described behavior is how the 3300 deals with dial conflicts, but is there a possibility that behavior would change with a software update in the future? Also, we actually have 911 and 9911 built in ARS routes (actually *100911 and *1009911, *200911, *2009911, etc, because of the way our zones and cluster is set up) so, would I need to add a speedcall for 9911* as well?

It seems this solution -should- work, but I need to make double- and triple-sure it actually works when we need it to work.

Comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks!
-dg

[SUSD]

Oddly enough, I have a 911 question as well this morning, hope I may jump on this bandwagon.

We have the Dial 9 to get out also. We use a fax system and try to tell people, Don't add a 1 in front of your number. The fax system dial 9 for outside, it sees a huge long distant number, so it dials a 1 and then the one from the user.

Mitel grabs the call and sends it to 911 immediately.

We were thinking about the option of switching over to Dial 8 for outside ? Is there a best option for dial out and 911s ?

[ralph]

I wrote the doc for the 911 stuff.   Here the link: www.mitelforums.com/articles/how-to-stop-accidental-911-calls.php
This is not affected by software upgrades since it involves dial-able numbers.

I use this every time I put a system in and generally retro fit systems where I don't see it enabled.
Because of how the Mitel handles conflicting numbers it will cause a failure when dialing a number such as 911-201-555-1212.

The way to block accidental 911 calls is to create a system speed call of 911* or 911# with an actual number that points anywhere.
That way when you dial 911+<anything other than a * or #> it will fail because it is not a * or a #)

The only down side is that there is a slight delay when dialing 911 while the system works out if you're going to dial the extra digit or not.  The delay can be shortened via class of service if needed.

Ralph