As those of us who depend on Callcentric know, they've had a few bad weeks with denial of service attacks, rendering their service unreliable. For those of us with E911 through them, that's a big problem. For those that use Callcentric for all their service, it's a bigger problem.
Now, Callcentric is down due to the NYC power outage. They apparently have limited emergency power for a very short period, after which they go dark, since they are in a building without backup generators (apparently you can't have them for just an office, it has to be the whole building. Apparently they didn't co-locate their datacenter.
I'm done with them. I need reliable 911 service. I will investigate other E911 options, but in the meantime I'm redirecting my 911 calls to the emergency dispatch center via their direct dial emergency number.
I use the "expert" interface, i.e. I type in the IP address of my box and edit things directly. I made the following easy change:
Physical Interfaces, Phone Port, Outbound call route:
OLD: {911:sp2}
NEW: {(<911:DIRECTDIALNUMBERGOESHERE>):SP1}
It's that simple. You can find the direct dial emergency number on the website of your dispatch center.
I will test it later today, when it's light out and the weather lightens up here in Michigan, by calling the NON-EMERGENCY number and asking if I can perform a test call on 911. If today it doesn't lighten up I'll do it tomorrow.
When Callcentric is back up, I plan on closing my account and getting a refund for September and October at least.
Hope this helps others.
Update: Tested fine. I also went into all my SP2 settings and restored to defaults, so I have no Callcentric info on my OBi, and therefore should also not have any problems that Callcentric users had with their multi-week denial of service attack, which also affected OBis.