911 Compliance for Remote Workers: The Gap Most Organizations Haven’t Fixed

Your headquarters is compliant. Your branch offices are compliant. You’ve mapped floors, registered addresses, configured notifications.

But what happens when Sarah from accounting dials 911 from her kitchen table in Phoenix, while her phone is registered to your Chicago office?

Responders go to Chicago. Sarah is in Phoenix. And your “compliant” phone system just sent help 1,500 miles in the wrong direction.

This is the remote worker 911 gap. And it’s the compliance issue most organizations still haven’t solved.

Why Remote Workers Break 911 Compliance

Traditional 911 compliance was designed for a simple world: people work in offices, offices have addresses, addresses get registered with the phone system.

That world is gone.

Today’s workforce is hybrid, distributed, and mobile. People work from home offices, kitchen tables, coffee shops, hotels, and airports. They use softphones on laptops, mobile apps connected to corporate systems, and VoIP services that travel wherever they do.

The problem: 911 location data doesn’t travel with them.

When you provision a user in your phone system, you assign them an emergency address, typically their primary office location. That address gets delivered when they call 911.

If the user is sitting at their desk in that office, great. If they’re working from home 500 miles away, the address is still the office. If they’re in a hotel for a conference, still the office. If they moved to another state six months ago and never updated anything, still the office.

Ray Baum’s Act requires that 911 calls deliver a “dispatchable location”: an address where responders can actually find the caller. A registered office address for someone working from home doesn’t meet that standard.

The Scale of the Problem

How many of your employees work at least part of the time remotely?

For many organizations, it’s a large share of the workforce. That’s not an edge case. Every one of those employees could be calling 911 with the wrong location.

Consider a typical scenario:

• Monday: Employee works from the office. 911 location is accurate.
• Tuesday: Employee works from home. 911 location shows the office.
• Wednesday: Employee works from a co-working space. 911 location shows the office.
• Thursday: Employee travels for a client meeting and works from a hotel. 911 location shows the office.
• Friday: Employee works from home again. 911 location shows the office.

Four out of five days, a 911 call would send responders to the wrong place.

Now multiply that by every hybrid employee in your organization.

What the Law Actually Requires

Ray Baum’s Act doesn’t have a “remote worker exception.” The requirement for a dispatchable location applies to all 911 calls made from multi-line telephone systems, regardless of where the user is physically located.

The FCC’s rules for off-premises devices, like a softphone at home, require an automated dispatchable location if technically feasible. Otherwise, the system must send a location the user updates manually, or the best available location that can be obtained at reasonable cost (47 CFR 9.16). A headquarters address for someone working from home in another state doesn’t meet any of those options.

Congress is paying attention, too. On April 21, 2026, the House passed H.R. 5201, the Kari’s Law Reporting Act, by a vote of 405 to 5 (House Clerk). If it becomes law, the FCC would have 180 days to publish a report on its enforcement of Kari’s Law, including how well MLTS manufacturers and vendors have complied, the obstacles to compliance, and recommendations to Congress (H.R. 5201). As of October 2026, the bill is with the Senate Commerce Committee. It isn’t law yet, but it shows Congress is paying closer attention to how the law is being regarded.

Why “Just Update Your Address” Doesn’t Work

Most phone system vendors offer a simple solution: let users update their own emergency address.

Microsoft Teams has a setting where users can enter their current location. Cisco has similar self-service options. The theory is that remote workers will keep their address current, and the problem solves itself.

In practice, this fails for several reasons:

People don’t know the setting exists. Many employees have never looked at their emergency calling settings. They don’t know where to find them or that they’re supposed to update them.

People forget. Even employees who know about the setting don’t remember to update it every time they change locations. Work from home Monday, forget to update. Travel Tuesday, forget to update. It’s not malicious: it’s human nature.

People move and don’t tell anyone. An employee relocates from Texas to Florida but keeps working the same job remotely. IT never knows. HR might not know for months. The phone system definitely doesn’t know.

The setting doesn’t exist everywhere. Not every softphone or mobile app has self-service location settings. Some systems have no mechanism for users to update their address at all.

Relying on manual user updates is like relying on employees to manually update their passwords but never actually requiring them to do it. Some will. Most won’t. And you’ll only find out there’s a problem when something goes wrong.

What Organizations Are Actually Doing

Organizations that take remote worker 911 seriously are moving beyond “tell employees to update their address.” Here’s what works:

Network-Based Location Detection

Some solutions can detect when a user’s device is on a known network and automatically update their location. If the employee’s laptop connects to their home WiFi (which has been registered), the system knows they’re at home and updates the 911 address accordingly.

Limitation: Only works for pre-registered networks. Doesn’t help with hotels, coffee shops, or other temporary locations.

GPS and Device Location

Mobile apps can use GPS to determine location automatically. When someone makes a 911 call from their phone, the device’s GPS provides the address.

Limitation: Works well for mobile devices, less well for laptops (which often have GPS disabled or unavailable). Also raises privacy considerations some organizations aren’t comfortable with.

Prompted Location Verification

Some systems prompt users to confirm or update their location when they log in from a new network or at regular intervals. This isn’t fully automatic, but it’s better than hoping employees remember on their own.

Limitation: Still depends on user action. Users can click through prompts without actually verifying.

Dedicated E911 Solutions

Purpose-built E911 platforms focus specifically on solving the location problem across all scenarios: office, remote, mobile, and traveling workers. These solutions typically combine multiple detection methods and maintain a location database that stays current as users move.

Limitation: Requires deploying and maintaining an additional solution alongside your phone system.

The Compliance Conversation You Need to Have

If you haven’t specifically addressed remote worker 911, you have a compliance gap. Here’s how to assess it:

1. Count your remote workers. How many employees work from home at least one day per week? That’s your exposure.

2. Check your current configuration. What happens today if a remote worker calls 911? What address is delivered? If the answer is “their registered office address,” you have a problem.

3. Evaluate self-service adoption. If your system allows users to update their own location, how many actually have? Pull the data. It’s probably lower than you think.

4. Document the gap. Even if you can’t fix it immediately, document that you’re aware of the issue and have a remediation plan. This matters for audits and liability.

5. Explore solutions. Talk to your phone system vendor about what options exist. Evaluate dedicated E911 providers who specialize in this problem. Understand what it would take to actually close the gap.

The Risk of Doing Nothing

Organizations often deprioritize remote worker 911 because it feels like an edge case. The thinking goes: “How often do employees actually call 911 while working from home?”

Not often. But when it happens, it matters enormously.

A remote employee has a heart attack. Their spouse calls 911 from their cell phone, but the employee’s corporate softphone is the last number the spouse sees and dials. Responders are dispatched to an office building 1,000 miles away.

A remote employee experiences a home invasion while on a work call. They dial 911 from their work phone. Help goes to the wrong state.

Scenarios like these are rare. But when one happens, “we didn’t think remote workers were a priority” isn’t an answer anyone wants to give.

How 9Line Closes the Remote Worker Gap

Remote-worker 911 is the kind of gap 9Line was built to close. Our platforms integrate directly with the calling environments most enterprises already run (Cisco CER and CUCM, BroadWorks, and Microsoft Teams) and extend Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’s Act compliance to every endpoint, including softphones used by employees working from home, on the road, or in shared workspaces.

Rather than relying on employees to remember to update a setting, 9Line combines network-based detection, device-level location signals, and prompted verification into a single workflow, so the dispatchable location that gets delivered to the PSAP reflects where the call is actually originating, not where the device was first provisioned. On-site notifications are routed to the right people automatically, and every call is logged for audit purposes. When the FCC asks for evidence of compliance, you have it.

9Line’s team can walk through your existing calling environment, identify where remote endpoints are out of compliance, and deploy the controls needed to bring them in line, typically without ripping and replacing what you already have in place.

When a remote worker hasn't updated their location

Even with good processes, some employees will forget to confirm where they are. What your system does then matters. Some solutions block or delay the call until a location is entered. 9Line never blocks a 911 call. If a remote worker's location isn't current, the call still goes through, and the caller is asked where they are so the call reaches the right 911 center. 9Line also shows administrators which users haven't provided a location, so IT can follow up before an emergency.

Frequently asked questions

Do 911 compliance rules apply to employees working from home?

Yes. RAY BAUM’s Act has no remote worker exception. The dispatchable location requirement applies to every 911 call made from a multi-line telephone system, regardless of where the user is physically located.

What location must a softphone send when a remote employee calls 911?

Under 47 CFR 9.16, off-premises devices such as a softphone at home must send an automated dispatchable location if technically feasible. Otherwise, the system must send a location the user updates manually, or the best available location obtainable at reasonable cost. A headquarters address for someone working from home in another state meets none of those options.

Is letting employees update their own emergency address enough?

Rarely, in practice. Employees often don’t know the setting exists, forget to update it as they move between home, travel, and the office, or relocate without telling IT. Some softphones and mobile apps have no self-service location setting at all.

How do organizations keep remote workers’ 911 locations accurate?

Common approaches include network-based detection of registered networks, GPS on mobile devices, prompts that ask users to confirm their location on a new network, and dedicated E911 platforms that combine these methods and keep the location database current.

Does 9Line block a 911 call if a remote worker hasn’t set a location?

No. 9Line never blocks a 911 call. If a remote worker’s location isn’t current, the call still goes through, and the caller is asked where they are so it reaches the right 911 center. Administrators can also see which users haven’t provided a location.

The Bottom Line

Remote work isn’t temporary. It’s how organizations operate now.

That means remote worker 911 isn’t an edge case: it’s a core compliance requirement. The same laws that require accurate location for office phones require accurate location for remote workers.

Most organizations haven’t caught up to this reality. They’ve got office compliance dialed in while a large share of their workforce is dialing from locations the system doesn’t know about.

The gap is real. The risk is real. The question is whether you close it before it matters, or after.

Your remote workers are part of your organization. Their 911 calls are your responsibility.