Each time the Olympic games occur, a special ceremony takes place a few months before the official start of the games. The official Olympic torch is lit, and then transported from the ancient Olympic facilities in Olympia Greece, to the lucky host city of that year's event. The original Olympic flame that is generated in Greece is maintained throughout its worldwide journey through two practices that are all too common for IT professionals. Resiliency and Redundancy. Read about how these two processes are utilized to maintain the lineage of the Olympic flame.

Since the holiday season seems to be the season for "lists", and many of us will be traveling and staying in hotels, I thought I would compile some photographic evidence of how I find 9-1-1 implemented in the places that I stay across North America.

While at the IAUG Eastern Connect conference in Newport, Rhode Island, Fletch catches up with Tim Kenyon, President and CEO of Conveyant Systems, Inc. for an update on activities in the European Union around the Next Generation 112 Long Term Definition. Also discussed are the new eCall initiatives that are being implemented to allow vehicles to share important information in the event of an accident with Public Safety Officials that will allow the proper dispatch of resources.

The Emergency Alert System (EAS) in the United States is in place and designed to warn citizens of impending danger. it uses specialized alert tones that are broadcast over the air on television and radio channels. This week, the Federal Communications Commission issued large fines to Turner Broadcasting and a Kentucky television station for allegedly broadcasting fake or simulated EAS tones during non-emergency broadcasts. Find out why they took this tough stance, and gain a little insight on how the nation's EAS infrastructure is designed in this week's podcast from Avaya's Chief Architect for Public Safety Solutions, Mark Fletcher, ENP. Special thanks to APN Legal Correspondent Martha Buyer for catching this story in a blog written by Scott R. Flick from Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman, LLP on his CommLawCenter Blog.

EENA, the European Emergency Number Association, is making great strides forward in emergency communications across the European Union. Markus Bornheim, with Avaya in Frankfurt Germany, manages public safety initiatives across the European Union. This week, Fletch sits down with and talks to Markus about some exciting new technology coming to the EU in 2014 called eCall. The eCall initiative will allow vehicles that have installed a special eCall modem to transmit critical telematics information to public safety officials. The system was designed to be backwards compatible with almost any device that can make an emergency 112 call. This is exciting technology that could have uses beyond vehicles, and bridge the gap in delivering more explicit data to emergency services control rooms while the next generation 112 networks are being built.

Officials in Ohio claim VoIP Provider ICS unlawfully intercepted 911 calls from customers. This could be relevant case law for MLTS Locally Terminated calls? Is ICS criminally accountable? Time will tell, APN covers the story here.

What is Vermont best known for?

Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Vermont is the 6th least extensive and the 2nd least populous of the 50 United States. It is the only New England state not bordering the Atlantic Ocean. While the public is reminded that, whenever possible, they should still call 911 if they need help, if they can’t call, or they are in a situation where using the phone would not be safe, Vermonters who subscribe to either Verizon Wireless or AT&T should know and understand how they can get help via text messages to 9-1-1.

Many of us forget one little thing that makes us pretty fortunate. While we have ubiquitous emergency services from just about everywhere, across most of the developing world, this is simply not true nor even possible. The telephone infrastructure does not exist, the public safety personnel do not exist, and people are quite often left to tend to themselves.

Can we crowd source emergency services in these underdeveloped areas? The folks at Trek Medics International think it can, and have a plan.

This week I sit down with Myron Herring, President and CTO at Synergem Technologies, Inc., a provider of NG911 PSAP gear delivered on the Avaya Communications Manager platform. We talk about Busy Hour Call Completion rates for NG911 gear, the difference between a communications platform and an Open Source soft switch that some of the other solution providers deliver, and the ability to perform detailed call routing based on more than just a phone number translated to an address.

The successful deployment of a NG 911 ESInet is going to require more than just a basic level of network knowledge. Complexities insecurity models and inter-conductivity between agencies and their resources will be paramount to making collaboration and unification of public safety possible. "Dark Horse Networking" is sure to be a skill set requirements in the future.