Kari's Law was signed into federal law in 2018. The law is named after Kari Hunt Dunn, who was attacked and killed by her estranged husband in a Texas hotel room. During the attack, Kari's daughter tried calling 911 four different times from the hotel phone but did not know she needed to dial a "9" first to get an outside line. How many times have we taught our children to simply dial 9-1-1 for help?

  Since that fateful attack in 2013, Kari's father, Hank Hunt, worked tirelessly to fix this common practice. Thanks to his and many other's efforts, Kari's Law goes into effect on February 16th, 2020, and this means you may have to examine how your phone system is currently set up to handle emergency calls.

No more prefixes to dial 911

  The critical requirement of Kari's Law is that all users have to be able to dial 9 1 1, three digits, and three digits only to reach 911 emergency services. If you use "9," a "5," or anything else as an outside line access code, you will have to make some changes to your phone system to comply with Kari's Law.

Internal Notifications required

  Another requirement of Kari's law is that users of an MLTS (a multi-line telephone system) must enable notifications via phone, text, on-screen pop up/notification, or email when someone places a 911 call. These alerts assist local security teams to assist emergency responders when they arrive.

  If you are unsure whether your phone system complies with Kari's Law, please engage us. We at intlx are your phone system experts and are offering a free consultation to see if your company is compliant; if it's not, we can help with making it so. Give us a call today.

Learn more by reading the published FCC Fact Sheet.