E911 setup with Telnyx — register your physical address for 911 dispatch

In the United States, every phone number capable of making a 911 call must have a registered physical address that emergency dispatchers receive when the call comes in. For traditional landlines this happens at the carrier level automatically; for VoIP-originated calls (your hosted PBX falls in this category), you have to register the address explicitly per DID. This article walks the E911 setup process on Telnyx, the rules to follow, and the test you should run to confirm everything works.

Why this matters legally

Three US laws apply:

• Kari's Law (2017): multi-line telephone systems must allow direct 911 dialing without a prefix (no "9 for outside line then 911"). Your PBX must let users dial 911 straight.
• RAY BAUM'S Act § 506 (2018): VoIP services must convey a "dispatchable location" (room, floor, suite — not just the street address) when a 911 call is made.
• FCC rules: VoIP providers must collect and transmit accurate location info; failures can be tens of thousands of dollars per incident.

If you're hosting a business PBX with multiple physical sites or multiple suites, every endpoint needs the correct dispatchable location. The penalty for getting this wrong is not just regulatory — emergency response goes to the wrong address.

Telnyx E911 — how it works

Telnyx assigns each DID an E911 address. When a 911 call comes in from that DID, Telnyx routes it to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) that serves the registered address, and includes the address in the ANI/ALI data the dispatcher sees.

You pay a small monthly E911 fee per provisioned DID (a few dollars), and per-use fees only if there's a 911 call (rare). The recurring fee is regulatory, not Telnyx's discretion.

Setting up E911 on a Telnyx DID

1. In the Telnyx portal: Numbers → My Numbers.
2. Click the DID you want to register.
3. Go to the Emergency Services tab.
4. Click Add Emergency Address.
5. Fill in:
   • First name / Last name of the primary contact for that location.
   • Address Line 1: street address.
   • Address Line 2: suite, floor, department — the dispatchable location detail. This is the RAY BAUM compliance piece.
   • City, State, ZIP, Country: the rest of the address.
6. Telnyx validates the address against USPS. If it doesn't match, it'll suggest a correction; pick the right one.
7. Save and Enable Emergency Services on the DID.

Allow ~5 minutes for the registration to propagate to Telnyx's 911 routing partner.

Hosting a multi-location business

If a single PBX serves multiple physical sites, each location needs its own DID and its own E911 registration. The 911 dispatch goes to whatever DID was used as the caller ID for the outbound 911 call.

Patterns:

• One DID per location: simplest. Each site has a local DID with its own E911 address. Phones at that site use that DID as their caller ID for outbound (including 911).
• One DID per extension: more granular. Each employee's mobile-extended phone has its own DID and E911-registered location. Common in larger orgs.
• Single main DID with floor/suite as Address Line 2: works only if there's truly one address; multi- building campuses need separate DIDs per building.

Avoid: one main DID covering multiple physical sites. That's non-compliant with RAY BAUM's Act because dispatch can't know which site.

Configuring the PBX side

In FreePBX®, configure the 911 outbound route to use the right DID per location:

1. Create an Outbound Route named emergency.
2. Dial Patterns: 911, 1911, 933.
3. Trunk Sequence: your Telnyx trunk.
4. Place it at the top of the Outbound Routes list (highest priority).

For per-location CID: use a separate trunk per location, or set the CID per-extension under Extensions → edit → DID Number. Or use a Custom Context to override CID based on the extension's location group.

In FusionPBX®, the same pattern — a dedicated outbound dialplan entry for emergency numbers, mapped to the Telnyx gateway, with per-extension caller ID controlling which DID gets used.

Testing — call 933, not 911

911 is the real emergency line. Don't test by calling it. Telnyx (and Verizon's E911 routing partner) provide 933 — calling 933 plays back the location info that would have been sent to the dispatcher had you called 911. It's the test number.

Call 933 from each location's phone. You should hear a recorded playback of the address registered for that DID. If you hear the wrong address, fix it before someone has a real emergency.

Re-test 933 any time you change E911 addresses or rotate DIDs.

The "I'm not in the US" question

E911 as described above is US-specific. Different countries have different emergency-routing requirements:

• Canada: 911 with similar location-routing requirements; carriers handle the routing but you still need to register addresses.
• UK: 999 with PSAP routing.
• EU: 112 universal emergency number.
• Australia: 000.

Telnyx's emergency-services feature is US/Canada. For other jurisdictions, check the carrier's emergency-services documentation — many international carriers don't offer emergency-services support and you'd need a local carrier for that locality.

Notification — who gets alerted when 911 is dialed

Kari's Law requires "notification" to a centralized location (security desk, office manager) when 911 is dialed from the system. The notification can be:

• An email or SMS to designated recipients.
• A console alert on a security workstation.
• A page to a beeper, depending on the size of the org.

FreePBX has a Calls Notify feature you can configure as part of the emergency outbound route's destination. FusionPBX has Notify event triggers in the dialplan. Either way: configure something. Just routing the call to 911 isn't enough — the law expects internal notification too.

Per-month / per-call costs (Telnyx)

• Recurring E911 fee: ~$1.50/DID/month. Required.
• Per-call E911 fee: a few dollars per completed 911 call.
• 933 test calls: free.

Other carriers price similarly. Whatever you pay, paying it on day one is cheaper than the $10k+ regulatory fines for a missing or wrong E911 setup.

If you have specific compliance questions

Telnyx's compliance docs are a good starting point but they're not legal advice. For complex multi-tenant or multi-jurisdiction deployments, talk to a telecom lawyer or compliance consultant. LYLIX hosts the PBX but can't make compliance determinations for your organization — that responsibility sits with you.

FreePBX® and Asterisk® are registered trademarks of Sangoma Technologies Corporation. Telnyx is a trademark of Telnyx LLC. This article is informational; it does not constitute legal or compliance advice.